


Transistor

by Jeevey



Category: Oasis (Band)
Genre: Drug Use, Early Days, Eighties, Inspiral Carpets, Just gonna keep pushing up this chapter count, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Oasis, Period-Typical Homophobia, Walking tours of Manchester
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23770351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeevey/pseuds/Jeevey
Summary: Summer of 1988, Manchester, England. The rave scene was exploding and drugs were everywhere. The period would later be called the Second Summer of Love. In February more than 20,000 people marched through Manchester in protest of Section 28, a piece of Thatcher legislation that effectively banned public acknowledgement that homosexuality existed. On May 30th, the Stone Roses played an anti-Section 28 benefit at the International Two. It was there, one day after his 21st birthday, that Noel Gallagher met Graham Lambert.Meanwhile, Clint Boon had been hustling in Manchester bands for years. He designed T shirts, hand-painted demo jackets, hung banners, created bubble-saturated dreamscapes on a shoestring, ran a recording studio, played in or managed a dozen bands. He joined the Inspiral Carpets by showing up to rehearsal uninvited. He ultimately took them to become one of the biggest bands in England.And somewhere in all that was Noel Gallagher.
Relationships: Clint Boon/Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher/Noel Gallagher
Comments: 91
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

It was early June when Graham started bringing a skinny, dark-haired kid around to rehearsals. There was nothing unusual in that. Graham went through lovers about as often as laundry detergent, and some of them were boys. It was Manchester, after all. Everyone knew where to meet a boy, if that was what you wanted.

Clint did sometimes want to meet a boy and Manchester wasn’t that large a city, so he often knew Graham’s ones by sight when they started coming around. He didn’t know this one. He looked the kid over carefully the second time he came with Graham to set up a gig, wondering where he’d come from and who he was. It was early June and the loading doors were propped open, letting light and air stream in from behind the stage. Clint’s keyboards took as long as a drum kit to set up and he was a good deal more picky than any drummer he knew, so he was always the first one in. He watched them from the corner of his eye while he unrolled cords, set up the Leslie cabinet and its microphones, and adjusted stands.

The kid seemed nervous as fuck, with a vigilant, deliberately arrogant expression. Little and wiry, with a shock of dark hair and vivid eyes, he seemed torn between keeping two possessive eyes on Graham and staring around, just daring anyone to think the word _queer_ so he could kick their teeth in. Clint shook his head. He would have to cool down if he was going to spend much time with Graham, because Graham was cheeky enough to try it on with anyone, anywhere, and didn't fuss about the words. This kid was about to get an education in coming out, ready or not.

That was the real problem, Clint decided; the kid was too damned young. Boys this age never knew what they wanted. Half the time they’d be in a Princess Street sauna three times a week, reckless, bringing home God knows what disease, and the other half would get a baby on some girl just to have the choice made for them. This one, despite his hard front, seemed almost unbelievably young. If he’d been a girl Clint would have been on the lookout for an angry brother storming in to protect his virtue.

He also looked like he’d been recently released from a labor camp: hungry, wary, and awash with hesitant wonder. He seemed to take in his surroundings better once he realized his new boyfriend's band didn’t give two fucks about his presence, and slowly he began to light up like a Christmas tree. He was full of questions, some of them intelligent. He followed Graham around, unwinding cords and laying gaffer tape on the floor at his direction, probably trying to make himself useful enough to be given free beer with the band. Clint reckoned that if he was helpful and bright, he was already miles ahead of the girlfriends that came through. Clint didn't have any opinion of guys who brought their girlfriends to work--and gigs were work. As far as he was concerned, anyone who got free beer should be pulling their weight, and it took more than just looking pretty.

When Graham got distracted with sound checking his guitars, the kid simply drifted against the wall, uncertain of what to do on his own.

“Oi,” called Clint. The dark head jerked around. “There's a box in the van,” Clint told him, “with a bunch of lights and what not. Get it in here and I'll show you how to hang them up.” 

It was a test, Clint later admitted. There were in fact about eight boxes of stage trapping in the van, only one of them with lights in it, and they weren’t even on top. The kid got the right one in first, and no others until he was asked.

“Well done,” Clint said, when he opened it. The kid looked offended at his praise. Together they looked in the open box of ribbons, candles, gauzy scarves, and twinkle lights.

“Kinda twirly, innit,” the kid said skeptically. 

It did, in fact, look exactly like the kind of trunk full of women's underwear that Clint sincerely hoped he might find in a French whorehouse someday, and the sight of it never failed to make him smile. “The feathers and bubble machine are in the one behind the driver seat,'' he said. “Bring me those ones and we'll get started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Footage of the anti-Section 28 march in February, 1988. https://www.mdmarchive.co.uk/artefact/11227/ALBERT_SQUARE,_MANCHESTER_VIDEO_1988
> 
> And a one hour documentary of that day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbNig5ZNgTE


	2. Chapter 2

Over the next few weeks Clint watched the skinny kid grow in confidence. Noel was as much younger than most of the others as Clint was older, but he was mouthy, vibrant, and funny. He went everywhere Graham did. He was a strange bird, but winning--moody, fantastically energetic, and clever.

“That kid does my head in,” said Martyn, noodling over his bass one day while they waited for Graham and Noel to turn up to rehearsal. “We took him down to an acid house night in Blackburn, me and Graham, y’know? It were in Pump Street, utterly packed, John J was spinning, madness in there. Must have been eight hundred people. We gave that little ‘un two e’s and I don’t think he stopped for a drink of water or a cigarette all night. Honest to God, I thought we were gonna have him in seizures.”

“Y’can’t do that, you have to drink water,” Gilly said sagely from behind his drum kit. He had only just turned seventeen, but he’d been in the band longer than Clint had and felt he knew everything about being grown up.

“What do you know about it, squint? You couldn’t even get into a pop-up party wi’that baby face. Go home to your mammy,” Steve said. If only keyboard players could front a rock band, Clint reflected, they wouldn’t have to deal with cunts like Steve, who went on, “He’s a good footballer, and that’s all that matters, innit?”

“Is it, now,” Martyn said. “I thought there was music goin’ on. Someone said there was a band around here? Said the singer was shite, though... Come to think of it though, I don’t know about playing football wi’that one, either. Quick as fuck and canny with the ball, but I thought he was going to black my eye when I knocked him down the other day.”

“He can only black your eye if you let him catch you,” Steve observed. “Where are they, anyway?”

“Have a little meat-and-two-veg before practice,” Martyn said with a rude gesture of his fist. 

Gilly stared for a moment, his baby face turning pink, and laughed out loud. “He makes himself right at home, the little ‘un, don’t he?”

“Like Comrade Brezhnev, he acts like he owns the place,” Steve agreed.

“Well, that’s what I did, too” Clint said. “In the beginning, remember? None o’ you thought you needed a keyboard player at all. Wheeled me big kit in like someone had asked me to be here when no one did. And it turned out okay, dinnit? The only way to get what you want, lads, is to act like you deserve it, then work until you do.”

“What does Comrade Brezhnev want?” Gilly asked. 

Clint shrugged. “To be a groupie? To be friends with a bunch of cool cunts like us? I don’t know. But he knows a good tune from a bad one, and that’s all I care about.”

They came in a few minutes later, Noel with a purple love bite on his neck that he ignored with fabulous unconcern until he caught Gilly staring at it.

“D’y like my new tattoo?” he asked. “I’ll tell you how I got it. Me and Graham were at the Tesco just a few minutes ago, right, cause his mam made him go round for some Marmite before we come over here? So we’re coming out of the shop and this old lady, she looks at me and goes, ‘Ah, you look just like my old sweetheart as died in the war! Do y’ mind if I take a little peck?’ And what do you say, right? So I puts out me cheek so she can give me a little kiss--and I swear to God if she didn’t have me up against the wall, hands down me jeans and everything, and give me this! It was lucky Graham was there to get me out, or I would have lost me cherry right there in the car park.”

That was the way it was with Noel. He kept them all in stitches doing impressions of Prince Philip or telling ridiculous stories. He worked in some sort of dirty job but never appeared anywhere until he was clean and neatly dressed in a jumper and jacket like an old man’s. He rarely had money for his own drugs, but he was so fun to get high with that no one minded spotting him to go out. In return he made himself useful and learned how to set up and re-pack all their gear, a monstrous undertaking. Unlike most of the musical girlfriends Clint knew, Noel required no attention during practices. He’d sit motionless for hours, seeming content to play silent riffs on Graham’s extra guitar and making notes in a little book he always carried. 

He was never shy, though, and more than once spoke up to defend a tune that was about to go in the bin. “No, that’s a proper good ‘un.” he’d say. “Just make that chorus a little more sing-song, like. Get another harmony part in there.” Sometimes he’d bellow over the instruments as they struggled to polish some turd of a song, “Shite! Bin that piece of shite tune right now!” 

During the breaks Graham would throw himself in Noel’s lap, trying to suck his fingers or put new love bites on his neck, laughing while Noel pushed him away. One night they got talking there when Graham went to ask Noel about a tune, then stayed to whisper in his ear. The next thing Clint knew, Graham had forgotten all about rehearsal and the two of them were croodled up like the world was only big enough for them two. They sat on the ratty sofa, thighs pressed together. Noel's arm was tucked around Graham, invisible, and the other hand splayed across Graham’s knee, fingers spread shaky and wide. Graham’s fingers rested lightly on the back of Noel’s fair neck, and Noel’s head tipped back to catch his whisper. 

They appeared suspended in air, timeless and almost motionless. The others followed Clint’s stare and fell silent. “Fuck me,” someone murmured. As they watched, Graham’s hand moved up Noel’s thigh and settled on his zipper. Noel made a little sound and whispered something back, and his knees settled a little further apart. Clint decided that it was time to shake them back into decorum. He picked up the camera that he always kept on an amplifier and advanced until he was within a yard of them.

His camera was large, and old, and made a sound like the whooshing of a screen door when the shutter fired. Neither of the two on the couch blinked. He moved closer, carefully framed the shot, and fired again. Not a muscle. Noel’s lip moved in a perfect, wordless whisper, and bent to receive Graham’s kiss.

Clint turned to hold up his hands to the rest of the band, who were staring with eyes as wide as moons. “I think this is all we’re going to get done tonight. You--” he pointed at Gilly, who started like a dove when he was caught staring-- “Out. I won’t be responsible to your mother for defiling your virgin eyes. Go home. Everyone else, fancy a pint?”

As he pushed them all out the door, Clint turned back one last time. They were really kissing now, Noel’s face hidden behind Graham’s hair, Graham’s hands moving lightly and steadily over Noel’s keks. As Clint watched, Graham kissed him a little harder. Noel made an indistinct, helpless sound. One knee jerked higher, wider, and he settled more deeply into Graham’s hands. Clint hastily closed the door behind him.

Over the next few weeks Clint hardly spoke to either of them. But from a distance he watched the purple bruises on Noel’s neck fade to green, then yellow, then disappear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve messed with the Inspiral Carpet’s timeline a little here. Martyn Walsh didn’t really join the band until the band’s twelfth drummer walked out with singer Steve Holt halfway through the recording of _Life_. Martyn was recruited around the same time as Tom Hingley and remains with them until the present. When the Inspirals play, Martin is there. Given the twelfth bassist in five years is going to opt out in just a few months, I’m electing not to introduce him here.
> 
> Also, it appears that every young man in Manchester was given a silly nickname by his friends that was used like his real name. I’ve elected not to use them yet because honestly, it’s so precious it would look like *I* was being precious, but they may appear later.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint had a girlfriend of sorts, a girl called Meghan that he’d been seeing off and on for three or four years. She was nearly as tall as he was in her boots, with dark-chocolate hair and legs for days. She worked at a smart shop downtown, selling leather trousers to rich kids. He knew he didn’t deserve her, and it made him miserable. 

He didn’t know exactly how he knew when their time together was ending, but it was always unmistakable as a bell inside. On the last day they woke up together he thought she knew as well, because she came out of the shower fully dressed as if she’d put on armor. He sat at her kitchen table in his clothes from the night before and watched her make toast and eggs. Her flatmade had already been up and gone, but the place seemed overly full in its silence. Morrissey quietly wailed on the stereo, and she hummed along as she cooked. Her face was turned away, but he could see the wide silver hoops glinting in her ears.

“Regina Hurley and her man are getting a house,” she told him over her frying pan. “That leaves their flat in Leavenshulme open. It’s nice, you know. Two bedrooms and that.”

He knew what she wanted. A house, babies, the lot. A flat together would be the first step. He couldn’t do it.

“The EP we released this spring is going wild,” he said. “They’re playing it in London and all over. Planecrash, remember? We’re going to be touring all summer, back in the studio for a second EP, then touring again. Then hopefully a full album in the spring, and more tours.”

“That’s a lot of touring,” Meghan observed. An empty eggshell dropped into a bowl with a tiny crack.

“It’s really exciting,” ” he told her honestly. He wanted her to understand. “I was managing other bands forever. Hustling for someone else. Producing and promoting other people’s music and never really getting mine together, you know? Then I found these guys and...they’re really good. Good enough to make it happen. We’re so fuckin’ close. It’s going to happen, I can tell. The only question is if we ‘re going to break through after Steve leaves or before.”

“Wait, your singer is leaving?”

“He’s going to have to. He’s not good enough to go where Graham and I want to go.”

“So that’s it, you just sack him?” she asked.

“Well, he isn’t happy either, is he? He doesn’t have the voice for power pop, and no one likes doing what they’re not good at. That’s why he keeps complaining about the new songs and wanting to go back to punky garage stuff. He’ll leave on his own in a few months.”

“And then what, you just replace him? How does that work? Don’t people come for the front man?”

“They come for the songs, and those are mine and Graham’s. Singers can be replaced but songwriters and sound makers can’t. Meghan, I...I’m almost too old for rock and roll, do you know what I mean? This band is my last chance to make it. It’s so close I can taste it--and Steve can’t take us there.”

“Ah,” she said, as if everything were made clear. “Well. I guess you’d better sack him and find someone who can take you there.” She dished up the food, and he saw that while he’d been speaking she had cooked for only one. She began to eat her toast, staring down at him. He rose, awkwardly. 

“I’ll call you,” he said.

Then one day things were over between Noel and Graham. They never said anything to anybody. There was just one awkward day when they arrived separately at a rehearsal, Noel having come in first and situated himself in his usual corner. Graham stopped short when he saw him there, and they looked at each other silently for a moment.

A look of indescribable hardness crossed Noel’s face. Graham shrugged, tossed him a new set of strings from his pocket, and that was the end of it. There was no more finger sucking, but they still went out raving together every weekend. Noel was still in the van for every gig. They still crowded onto a train to away matches with hundreds of other wild kids, no tickets collected, and Noel was still out on the pitch ahead of them all, head-butting the boys from across town who got on his tits and stubbing out cigarette after cigarette in the grass. Still they said almost nothing to each other, but he was always there. It was almost like nothing had changed.

It wasn’t until weeks after the breakup that Clint came to understand that women loved Noel—-and that more importantly, he liked them back. He’d come down to Sheffield with them to help with the load in and argued football with Craig all the way down. Gilly, like most all the Manchester Irish they knew, supported Man United but Noel, like a contrary cunt, supported Man City. Both teams had already lost to Sheffield this season. They argued for hours about which loss indicated a stronger side. Clint, driving, thought that while Gilly had reason on his side Noel would probably never admit that he was losing an argument in his life, and that would probably win him a lot of arguments.

Sheffield was a good city for the band, getting better all the time. The crowd was wound up, mad for it, and Clint was flushed with success when he stepped down for a pint at the break. He caught sight of Noel halfway down the bar, glass up and head cocked in full-press storyteller mode. Around him stood a circle of pretty women. Clint watched, fascinated. Noel reached his punchline, and the girls all threw back their hair and laughed. Noel buried his face in his pint, blushing and pleased at his success. One of them laid her hand on his arm.

Noel’s eyes widened with interest. He drained his pint, slowly stretched to place the empty glass on the bar behind her so that she stood in the wide arc of his arm, and continued joking. Every one of the women stepped closer, obscuring Clint’s view of his laughing face. 

“I’m gonna skip out early, take the train home tomorrow,” Noel told Clint later on when their set was done. Three pretty girls stood behind him, talking to one another. He could see the conversation passing between them even though he couldn’t hear it; all back to mine, then you lot leave if he still seems okay, yeah? Clint wrenched his attention from wondering which one Noel was going home with.

“Yeah, of course,” Clint said. “I mean--of course. You’re not an employee.” Noel stood carelessly, making a good show at nonchalance for the girls, but Clint could see that he was vibrating with anticipation and pride. Clint shoved him gently. “Go on. Do us proud.” Noel’s excitement flared for one moment on his face. Then he carefully arranged himself into something confident, cool, unmistakably masculine and composed, and turned to face his girls.

Clint didn’t know why he was so surprised. He was glad for him, really, and couldn’t help laughing at the silent fist pump Noel made for himself just before placing his hand on his girl’s back--the tall one--and guiding her out through the crowd. But he was almost stunned with shock and jealousy, watching the indentation Noel’s hand made on her jacket. He was so jealous he felt sick, and it frightened him. It made him realize he’d been counting on something and suddenly he felt less confident, verging on stupid. In his preoccupation he almost drove them into a truck on the way home, and Graham shoved him out of the driver’s seat while everyone shouted and pelted him with empty beer cans.

The next few weeks were foggy and indistinct. At work at the printer’s Clint was glad for the endless rows of heavy boxes, the thumping press and binders. He was glad to be busy, and threw himself into it so That at the end of the day he ached to bone. At dinner he sat numbly, shaping and reshaping a man out of the modeling clay he kept in his pocket. “Wake up, Gumby!” the foreman would shout, and Clint would rise to bend and heft for another four hours. After work there were band rehearsals, gigs, or recording other bands in the studio he’d built in an discontinued mill just out of town. At the end of the night, still buzzing, he’d stay up to work on his own tunes and collapse near morning to dream swirly, organ-soaked dreams.

He felt Noel’s eyes on him even in his sleep. When they were actually in the room together Noel was moody all the time, laughing, sulking, or starting fights in turn. Sometimes Clint thought he must be a genius. Sometimes he thought he was a right twat. Sometimes he felt he didn’t care either way, because if only he could have Noel’s beautiful upper lip one time nothing would matter any more. He thought he must be going mad.

He asked Graham about him one day when they were alone in the studio, working on a tune together. Graham already had someone new, a girl this time, but it didn’t make a difference. Partly Clint was crawling with guilt about having it like a schoolgirl for his mate’s ex, but even more than that he just felt a mad desire to say his name out loud.

“Your man Noel,” he began.

“Oh my God, Clint. Take him. You two, honest to god,” Graham burst out, as if he’d been waiting to speak.

“Wait. What?” Clint’s fingers clattered on the keys.

“I’m okay with it. Really. Just do something, yeah? Everybody’s just fucking sick to death of you just staring and mooning all time. Get on with it already.”

“Are you sure?”

“I would tell you if I wasn’t. Remember Lisa, the one before him? You can’t have her, I’m going back for her later on.” Graham struck a rough chord, bent it, bent farther, and slid to release it. 

“Is...is there something wrong with him?”

Graham grinned. “No. But he’ll twist your nut. Do you feel better now? Let’s go back to the top of the verse now and give me that riff again. I’m missing it.”


	4. Chapter 4

They were setting up in a basement club in Hanging Ditch when Clint found Noel sitting quietly at his organ one evening. Most nights Isadora’s had DJs but on live music nights bands would play one after another, with hardly time to rip their equipment offstage before the next. Because of Clint’s big keyboard setup, he was the only one allowed to assemble and soundcheck before things started. Noel had turned up on the sidewalk when Clint parked on the street to load in, as he had a habit of doing. Together they’d dragged equipment down the dank stairs and set up, and Clint had wandered off for a beer. It was late afternoon and hardly anyone in the place was stirring.

Noel often fucked around with the band’s instruments as they loaded in and out of gigs. He scorned all offers of instruction but learned quickly by watching, and was fair on his way to becoming a good drummer. Bass was easy because he already played guitar, but he’d never volunteered to touch Clint’s things before. He sat, experimentally moving his fingers between black and white keys that made no sound because Clint had turned off the speaker before going for his beer. Clint wondered how long and closely Noel had been watching him play if he could envision what the silent intervals would sound like. 

“Turn it on, mate,” he said. Noel jumped about a mile at the sound of his voice. He really could hear it, then; he’d been totally unaware of Clint’s approach. Clint flipped on the Leslie so they could hear and budged Noel over with his hip. 

“Show me what you’re doing,” he said. 

Noel flushed and played three notes with his left hand, one at a time. “It’s stupid,” he muttered.

“No, it’s brilliant. You found it all on your own.” Clint played the same three notes a couple of octaves up. “You know what it is?

“I know what it _is_ ,” Noel said resentfully. “I don’t know what it’s _called_.”

“Of course, right. All that matters,” Clint said, smothering a smile. “This was my first chord, too, you started in the best place.”

“You must have got lessons when you were little?” Noel asked.

“Em, no. I used to sneak into the side chapel at St Patrick’s while my granny was in choir practice to fuck around with the little organ they had in there. The priest tanned my arse when he caught me playing _Riders on the Storm_ , then gave me to the nuns. They taught me some sad-arse thing and made me play on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Put me off keys until I started buying instruments out of the paper on me own when I was older, dinnit.” Noel laughed, a bright sudden sound that made Clint go warm all over. 

“Keep your hand just like that, but move it up a couple to here,” he said, showing Noel how his thumb should rest on the G, but carefully not saying its name. “That’s the next one, the five chord. It sounds fuller, right? Like it’s growing. Now back to the root chord, the one that sounds like home.” Noel mirrored him with both hands. “Good. Then you can play each note one at a time.” He played a stunted, 3 note arpeggio and let Noel repeat it. He was quick, and almost ambidextrous, and Clint felt like a tit as he realized he probably could have found the rest himself in about ten minutes. But now that he’d seen Noel at his instrument he really, really wanted to be the one to show him, and for some reason Noel sat here, letting him.

“Good,” Clint murmured. “Now see how your bottom note in this chord, your thumb is right next to the two black keys? You can do your three notes like we are, then reach under there to catch the next one that looks just the same. It finishes the octave.” A smile of satisfaction passed over Noel’s face. “Brilliant. Now you’ve got four proper beats.” 

They played their chords side by side for a moment. Distantly the barman rattled a tray of glasses. Along Clint’s leg there was the warmth of Noel’s jeans. “There. Two minutes in and you’ve got a proper arpeggio,” Clint said.

“Two minutes, we must be nearly done, right?” Noel grinned.

“Depends if you want a second invitation, doesn’t it,” Clint said, lifting an eyebrow. “Go back to the five again, the second one we just did. Now leave your hand just as it is, and slide the whole thing up just one note.” He did, and suddenly three bright notes became the sound of darkness. Noel made a noise of satisfaction and played it again, louder. “It’s minor now, right? Do you know what you’re playing yet?”

“A fuckin’ organ,” Noel said. It was a poor attempt at his grumpy mood, and when Clint sneaked a look his eyes were alight with eagerness.

“Yeah that, but you’re playing a proper song, too. Now for this next one you need four fingers, not three. The topmost one is a stretch, up here.” Clint pointed to the note that would make it a minor seventh, the sound of tension, far above the others. Noel had to work to reach it. His hands were much smaller than Clint’s, which had spanned ten or eleven keys since he was a kid. “Breathe into it,” Clint said gently, seeing Noel’s brows draw together. “It’s playin, not work. You don’t have to beat it.”

Noel shook out his hand, tried again, and got it. He looked so bright, so eager and ready that Clint ran his hand underneath Noel’s to lift it to the subdominant chord. Noel’s warm palm slid over the back of his hand, and Clint couldn’t help a little catch in his breath. It was the first time they had touched. 

“That’s the four chord,” Clint unsteadily. “You know it. It’s the one that sounds like--” Noel’s little finger curled around him and squeezed, fleetingly. “It--it sounds like being almost home.”

Noel’s eyes remained fixed on the keyboard. He didn’t move a muscle, just allowed his hand to rest on Clint’s as his fingers found their places, and the thick lashes cast a shade over his eyes. 

It wasn’t until that instant that Clint understood what a dick he’d been. All this time, he’d known that Noel liked men. Noel didn’t know the same about him. He was just brave as hell, nosing around the band all the time, making a place for himself. Following them around just in case--because of course this was all about Clint. This was why Noel was still here. He was waiting to find out what he wanted to know. And Clint was an arse.

“I have a real one at mine. A piano, I mean. If you’d like to see it,” he said in an awkward rush.

“At yours,” Noel repeated.

“Yeah.”

Noel’s hands moved over the final line of the verse again. Clint was riotously glad that of all the tunes in the world he’d taught him this one, which he could tell Noel loved. Let It Be. Noel even found the walk from the four down to the root chord and played it slowly, head tilted to listen. Then he blinked like he was waking up and asked, “How soon can we leave?”

At the top of a dusty stair Clint had left the door to his flat standing open. It wasn’t even a proper flat, really, just a narrow garrett above his grandmother’s house. When he left school he’d simply dragged his childhood bed upstairs, plumbed in a toilet and a sink, and that was that. There were some roughed-in cabinets that he’d picked from the side of the road and a loveseat covered with blue velveteen roses. Aside from that every inch of it was crammed with instruments, sound equipment, and records. He liked its low roof and dusty smell, but always felt a little shy when someone new came in.

“Put on some music, I’ll get drinks.” Clint waved Noel in the direction of the stereo. His voice sounded breathless in his ears. He watched Noel turn on the record he’d left on the turntable earlier and look with adorable curiosity at all of Clint’s junk. Clint surveyed the cabinets in a mild panic, hoping to be able to offer him something to eat. But of course there was nothing around because he was hardly ever at home, so he just gathered the clay bowl he kept his gear in and two shallow glasses of gin.

Noel bent over the piano looking more like a kid than ever, trying to pick out notes from the song on the stereo. Clint sat down and pushed a glass in front of him. 

“What are we listening to?” Noel asked after a moment.

“Jackson Browne. He’s an American.”

“American,” said Noel sourly. “Why’d you buy that?”

“He has my haircut. See?” Clint pointed to the album jacket propped up against the stereo, which looked like a lithograph of a beautiful man with a long bowl cut stamped on a brown paper sack. “Found it in the sale bin for four pounds fifty.”

“Fuck me. He does.” Noel smiled, and they let the music pass over them. “Jesus, listen to that voice, though,” he said presently. “And the tone on that piano. D’ you ever wish you could play like that?”

“I can play like that,” Clint said. Noel gave him a look of skepticism. Clint spread his hands and played with the record’s fat gospel chords, the legato rolls that surged like water. “What made you think I couldn’t?”

“I never seen you do it. Why don’t you, then?”

“Don’t mistake what you see a man do for all that he can do,” Clint said, and shrugged. “I play what makes me happy.” 

He lit a spliff and held it to Noel’s mouth so he didn’t have to take his hands from the keys. Noel’s offended look was back, and he scowled at the keys even as he sucked at the joint in Clint’s fingers. If Clint hadn’t been watching him for months he wouldn’t have dared to touch him. But he had, and he did. He stubbed out the ash exactly as if he wasn’t afraid at all, and kissed him.

Noel made a little noise as he breathed into Clint’s mouth. His upper lip really was as beautiful as he’d imagined, and so were the lashes that Clint covertly watched as he kissed him. He tasted like cigarettes and juniper, and he vibrated like a wire under Clint’s hands. He had somehow feared that Noel was a total innocent but of course he wasn’t: he knew how to kiss a man. Now that Clint’s mouth was finally on him Noel’s face lost every trace of hostility. He kissed like he was thirsty for it, clutching Clint’s forearm through his shirt and getting all up on his lap as Clint licked at his mouth.

Remember this, remember it, Clint thought incoherently. The way Noel slid onto his knee, the smell of him mixed up in the ones of Clint’s flat, his wiry little body. On a hunch he gave Noel a good bit of tongue all sudden and hard, and laughed at the rough noise he made. Had they really been waiting for months to get here? Clint couldn’t remember why. He shoved Noel back against the keys. Noel grunted as his head thumped against the spinnet case. Clint leaned over him, hands planted on either side, and pressed him into the piano as he stepped between his legs and shoved them apart. 

He was so little and hot and bossy, and his skin was almost unbelievably fair when Clint exposed it to the light. His hands fell away, letting Clint push things out of the way and lift him out of his clothes. He looked half wrecked already, all blush-red chest and mussy hair, watching Clint stroke his thighs and get comfortable on his knees. Clint ran two hands over his bare cock and balls, and smiled as Noel wriggled in impatience. Clint kissed his little belly and took him down whole. 

Clint gave him three long strokes with his mouth, as wet and dirty as he could make them. Noel didn’t make a sound. Clint looked up. He sat with his arms spread across the piano and fingers sprawled on the keys, head calmly lifted, knees wide. He looked like a king receiving some kind of tribute. What a strange, moody, insolent little fucker. Clint thought he’d like to shake him. Good thing he knew how, then, and liked it. So he spread one hand flat on Noel’s hip and went to work.

Clint took the head of his cock back in, not quite deep enough and a little too slow, spreading wet all down and around, getting his tongue under his kenny and thrusting inside. He let his breath gush out all hot and thirsty, and twisted his hand around the base. Soon Noel began to groan and shift. He looked fucking gorgeous, all torn apart and sweaty like that. Clint smiled around his mouthful and tucked two fingers around his balls. 

Clint coaxed him forward with his fingers but moved back at the same time, so that Noel had to lift to get what he wanted. The piano clanked as he scrambled for purchase. Clint sucked tight and began to let him a little deeper, still making him push up for it. “Fuck,” Noel said, breathless. Now his hand came down at last, groping vaguely. Clint nudged him forward, showing that he really meant him to thrust now, and Noel began to moan outright.

Still his hand hung in the air. Clint grasped it and shoved it into his hair, the thing Noel didn’t dare do on his own. “Come on,” he said inarticulately.

“Oh. Fucking _yes_ ,” Noel said. That did it for Clint, got him right down in the gut. He began to clumsily pull his clothes apart. “Shirt too,” Noel gasped. Clint got only part way there before giving up. He shoved his jeans open just enough to get his dick in hand, and that was all he had time for. They were the same being now, him and Noel, and they couldn’t wait another second: so fucking hot, stumbling in a rush until they tumbled over the edge like stones, like gravity itself, inevitable.

After a time Clint eased back, gasping, looking for something to wipe off with. He hadn’t even thought about getting a flannel ready and felt awkward, as if he were a bad host. At last he remembered a handkerchief in his pocket and fished it out, wiping first his hands, then swabbing Noel. He felt tongue-tied and shaky, ashamed of the way he’d moaned so hard at the end and how he’d felt his heart would burst for this sulky, moody, arrogant little groupie. For Graham’s old tart.

Noel touched his face to show where a spot remained. Clint wiped it, not looking up. He wanted Noel away and wondered how to get him out. 

“Hey.” Noel touched his face again. “Hey.”

Clint looked up and saw that Noel’s insolent expression was gone. In its place was a look of disbelief. Noel touched his face once more, shyly. Clint rubbed his cheek on Noel’s knee and grinned, embarrassed.

“All right,” he admitted at last. “That was pretty good.”

“That,” said Noel, “Was fuckin’ amazing.” He slid down onto Clint’s lap, pushed him over, and wormed his way into his shirt like a blushing kitten. Clint folded him in his arms. “Amazing,” he repeated meditatively.

“I might keep you for a bit,” Clint told him.

“Me?” Noel said mock innocence. “Why would you keep _me_ around? I haven’t even earned me keep yet, you had to do us both yourself, didn’t you. You might not even like it when I do. I might be bad at it, do you know what I mean?”

“I’ll let you give it a try later,” Clint said generously. 

Noel pretended to look at his watch. “Fifteen minutes and I’ll be ready.”

“Fifteen! You’ll kill me. Do you know I’m almost thirty years old?”

“Fuck me, you’re an old man. Thirty is all I’ll give you,” Noel promised, “and after that I’m taking matters into me own hands.”

“You!” Clint exclaimed, and began to push the mouthy bugger out of his clothes. That was easier said than done, though. Noel was wiry and stronger than he looked. He might as well have tried to pull a kitten from its blanket, and at last Clint found the only thing he could do was drag him back to the bed and teach him how to behave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Jamaica, the lead track from Jackson Browne’s debut album, the first one that would have played when it was left on the turntable. https://youtu.be/E0yBmjexsGw


	5. Chapter 5

That summer Clint became fond of his little flat in a way he never had before. 

The Inspirals were still gigging every chance they got, or Clint was out at his studio producing other bands, and whenever they weren’t together Noel was raving it up on E or seeing other bands at the Internationals. They were soaked in adrenaline and possibility. Time seemed to stand still, and the entire grey damp city seemed like nothing but a set piece where kids in baggy Day-Glo ran from one party to the next, passing untouched between motionless traffic. But still there was a day or two every week that they came up the stairs carrying Chinese takeaway, laughing, and sat on the love seat with Noel’s feet up over Clint’s knees, shouting about who was the best DJ in Manchester or which band had the most underrated side man, and eventually falling into kisses that tasted like sesame chicken and Barbasol shaving foam. 

Clint had never had a lover spend as much time there as Noel did. The women always had their own, nicer places where Clint stayed with them, and the men never seemed to hang around very long whatever. He didn’t mind. He knew it wasn’t a real home, just a way for him to live so he could put his money where he wanted it. But Noel seemed amazed and content with their privacy.

He seemed unsurprised by the rough cabinets with the two-burner propane cooker on top, or by the toilet behind a flowered curtain in the corner. Sometimes Clint would wake up to find his paints shoved over on the formica table while Noel transcribed his scraps of notes and lyrics into a notebook over his morning tea. On Noel’s pay days he’d fry them steaks and potatoes, smacking Clint’s hand when he came round to pick onions out of the pan. Sometimes Clint would plug headphones into his keyboard and Noel would get out his guitar and they’d ignore each other for hours, each in their own separate world.

One time Noel brought him a huge hardbound book of sheet music by Robert Schumann with little pen and watercolour illustrations that he’d found at the Longsight Thursday street market. “Made me think of you,” he said, colouring faintly.

Clint paged through it slowly with Noel’s feet on his lap, passing a spliff between them. It said the pieces were for children but Clint didn’t think he could ever get his hand around them. It said they were practice exercises but he could see they were real music, lyrical and melodic, and he could see, if he ever could play them, how fabulously agile his hands would become. 

“He was good. Really, really good,” Cint said at last. “These are beautiful. And a little scary somehow. I love it.”

“I thought you’d like it,” Noel said. Clint ran his thumb up and down Noel’s instep, slowly.

Clint’s bedroom, such as it was, took on the frowsy feeling of a bear’s cave. There were always a few of Noel’s things hanging about, a forgotten shirt or a handful of cassettes, sometimes a pair of sweatpants thrown over the foot of the bed. And the smell of him was always there, of course. The reek of them together filled Clint’s throat when he walked in, satisfying and thick.

Clint didn’t put up a curtain between the sleeping area and the main room, but it felt as if one was there. The windows were all at the opposite end of the building and at night it was almost totally black. Sometimes Clint stayed awake at night, looking at the blackness where he knew Noel’s face rested, wishing there was enough light to see him by. Sometimes he touched Noel’s face with his mouth instead, sightlessly exploring the heavy brows and restless eyes collapsed in sleep, the hair fallen over his forehead. He felt intensely glad that Noel never woke up at these times.

It felt a bit silly after a while for them to continue squeezing into Clint’s tiny single bed. It was at least as silly as they must look together, Clint supposed, him six inches taller and gawky in his billowy shirts and Noel, burning-eyed, in a jacket that looked like it was nicked from his granddad. Clint began to look in the papers for a proper bed, thinking of how he’d be able to stretch him out there and watch him thrash. Also, Noel had nightmares.

Clint didn’t understand what was going on the first time it happened. He woke up cold one night and found Noel tossing dully, having kicked all the blankets to the floor. Clint sat up to pull them back. Noel lay sleeping mostly naked, one thigh gleaming faintly from a distant window. How beautiful he was, his legs like dusted ivory and his head and chest buried in darkness under the eaves. Clint ran a hand up his thigh as he laid back down. Noel jerked like he’d been electrocuted.

“Shh,” Clint murmured, covering his shoulder. Noel shuddered. He was talking indistinctly in his sleep, a gritty, under the breath sound. He was turned away from Clint, hunched in a little ball, and when Clint touched his shoulder he was as hard and tight as rock.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Noel said clearly. “I hate you.” 

Clint withdrew his hand. Suddenly the night around them seemed cold and frightening. The frowsy bear cave of their cocoon was gone in an instant. Why had he never noticed the wind in the eaves before? Clint listened carefully, his heart racing. There were long seconds of silence, and a series of explosive, unintelligible mutterings from Noel. 

Clint was appalled by the utter hatred in his tone. What was he dreaming of? What was going on in his sleeping head? The quiet seemed to go on forever, the thundering night and Noel hissing hatred under his breath. At last he went silent for a long time, and Clint began to hope that he’d dropped into a real sleep. Their little bed began to shake from Noel’s tension, but Clint only realized what was going on when the gasp of Noel’s breathing began to resolve into a more audible sound. He was crying. Not tears, but the high tight sobs of terror. Clint threaded his arms around him without thinking, pulling his little body tight in a desperate wish to drag him out of this nightmare.

Noel jumped away so hard he fell out of bed. He didn’t say a word as he landed in a heap on the dusty boards. Clint couldn’t see him, but he could hear the panicky frozen vigilance of him there, and he didn’t dare move.

“Clint.”

“Yeah, love.”

“It’s okay, right? I’m okay.”

“Noel.”

Clint inched his hand to where Noel could feel it without actually touching him. Noel gripped it hard and, after a few seconds, began to climb back into bed. Clint held back the blankets, unsure of whether it was okay to touch him, but Noel crawled straight between Clint’s arms and began to shiver. Clint closed his arms carefully around him. 

“Are you…”

“I’m okay. Just--” Noel wriggled against Clint’s chest to indicate he should hold him tighter. Clint did, grateful for the permission. As he pulled him close he realized that Noel had an absolutely raging erection. But as soon as it bumped into him Noel shoved away so that all his bony parts remained stuffed up against Clint but his bum stuck out at the edge of the bed. Clint settled the blankets over him. Then thinking again, he clambered over top and pushed Noel to the wall side so he couldn’t fall out again and tucked them in all around. When he lay down Noel seized him and reburied his face in his chest. 

“Better?” Clint asked, his voice sounding thick and indistinct.

“Yeah. Just, tight, please.”

Clint did it, partly because Noel asked but partly because he was just so scared himself, just dying to pull them back to something normal. He was shamefully, secretly, raging for it himself now. Noel was so little, and smelled so fucking good back in their bed, and Clint’s terror was dissolving into a desperate need to know that this thing they had was real, to bring Noel back to--to what Clint thought was reality. He pushed away himself now, arse sticking out behind like Noel had done before to keep him from feeling him. He almost wondered if Noel didn’t want to be touched, the way he kept nuzzling at Clint’s chest. He was half a lover but half a child and still confused by his dream, Clint thought. He could never.

Noel was still breathing with the ragged hitch of draining sobs, and the truth was pressing at Clint’s insides, choking to get out. Ordinarily he’d just push Noel on his back and cover him with white stripes of it, the truth they both knew. But he couldn’t do that now and he felt like he might die if it didn’t come out somehow.

“I love you,” he said. “Noel.” The little head at his chest nodded fiercely. Clint slid a hand over his face and hair, sightless in the dark. He felt afraid that Noel couldn’t hear him, that he somehow didn’t understand. “I love you,” he said again. “I do. You’re--God. Fuck. I love you.” Noel gave one last hard gasp and went soft. Sleeping at last. Clint pulled him closer and put a few inches between himself and the edge of the bed, possessive and proud of the way Noel melted into his arms. 

“That’s right,” he murmured. “Go on now, sleepyhead. Love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a number of places online where you can explore the incredible cultural moment of the late 80's in the north Midlands. This is a good place to start. https://museumofyouthculture.com/museum-collections/
> 
> Robert Schumann did in fact write books of exercises for children that are still in use some 200 years later because of their combination of technical precision and musicality. The edition I mention does exist and Longsight's decades-old outdoor market is still running. I can't say for sure if Schumann's latent madness shows up in the exercises, but I like to think it does. During Schumann's lifetime he was completely overshadowed by his wife Clara Weiss Schumann, who was one of those Romantic era -classical pianists whose public stature in Europe very closely resembled rock stars. For a beautiful take on their fascinating lives, check out the novel Longing by JD Landis.


	6. Chapter 6

One night Clint made Noel meet him at the bus stop nearest his flat. Noel lived further out in Burnage with his mam, in a plain council house that Clint had seen only a few times. Ordinarily they drove around in Clint’s 1976 Ford Cortina, a car that he adored and refused to get rid of despite constant piss-taking from his mates. Noel bitched about taking the bus downtown when Clint told him where to meet. 

“I take the bus all the time, don’t I?” he grumbled.

Noel didn't drive, for reasons Clint didn’t understand. He wondered vaguely if he might be epileptic like Ian, an incredible singer who’s grown up with Clint but had massive seizures for years and killed himself at just 23 years old. But Noel didn’t seem either epileptic or depressed. He seized life with two hands like no one Clint had ever seen. Clint put the lack of a driving license down to sheer stubbornness and told Noel to meet him at the Stockport Road bus stop at eight. 

He was there, glowering through the window, when the bus pulled up at the stop. Clint jumped up all four steps and stuck a cinnamon drop into Noel’s hand. 

“Cheer the fuck up, mate, I’m takin’ you out,” he said. 

Noel popped it in his mouth and smiled; his glower was an act. Clint didn’t touch him, because the bus was fairly full and you never knew what kind of fella might be watching, but he sat so their knees pressed together and watched Noel turn the cinnamon drop over in his mouth. Noel stuck out his tongue whenever he caught Clint looking on the way downtown.

“Turn your collar up,” he told Noel as they got off at the Major Street stop. 

“What?”

“It’s the rules,” Clint explained. He turned left and led him down to Sackville and Canal Street, where a square building with Tudor beams and black windows sat on the corner. There were no lights or signs, and the place appeared to be locked despite the dull sound of music coming through the glass. A set of tired black letters on the third story said it was The Rembrandt, but the whole building seemed like it had given up caring. Clint looked up and down the street. A few blocks down was a bar with punters out on the street, but no one was nearer than that. He led Noel around to a plain black door and knocked twice. 

The door opened a crack, and a huge man glared at Clint through the gap without speaking. 

“Is Dorothy in?” Clint asked. The man looked suspiciously between him and Noel, taking in the way their hair, the way they stood, Noel’s granddad jacket and tidy trainers, and finally the popped collars and the tag of a light blue handkerchief that dangled from Clint’s pocket. He let them in, locked the door behind, and nodded toward a second unmarked door.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Noel said. “What is this place?” Clint squeezed his hand and opened the second door.

Inside it looked like a perfectly ordinary bar. Noel, with his offended expression on, took at all in as quickly as Clint had expected he would. Dim lights and gritty floors, a few tall-top tables near the dance floor, butty-sized booths along the wall. It was only a Wednesday but the room was pretty full so Clint steered them toward the bar and shouted for two McEwans. Then he tucked an arm around Noel’s waist and waited for the penny to drop.

Noel jumped when Clint touched him. They might do the sort of thing when it was only the band together, or perhaps at a rave where the whole crowd was E’d up and everybody was touching everybody, but never out on the street or in an ordinary bar. But this wasn’t an ordinary bar. Clint looked around, seeing what Noel saw. Older men talking in the corner, a group of stags shouting at the end of the bar, a couple or two croodling in a booth, a few pairs of dancers getting gropey on the floor.

Finally Noel turned to him. 

“It’s all men.”

“Yeah, love.”

“How did you find this place?” Noel demanded, face alight.

“Like everyone does. From a friend a long time ago,” Clint said sheepishly.

“Fuckin’ hell, Clint. This is brilliant.” Someone beside them received a plate of fish and chips from the barman. “Hey. Two of those?” Noel held up two fingers and pointed at the plate until the barman took notice of him and nodded. “Fuckin’ _hell_ ,” he repeated.

They carried their drinks to the last empty booth and budged in on the same side. Clint put his back against the wall, pulled Noel toward him, and for the first time he could think of they had a proper date.

“What was the best show you ever saw?” Noel asked over steaming plates of fish and chips.

Clint laughed. “December 9, 1976. No contest.”

“Really? No contest at all?”

“Really. What were you at the time, like eight or so?”

“Shove it,” Noel said without hesitation.

Clint suppressed a grin. That meant he had in fact been eight.

“It was the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and Buzzcocks at the Electric Circus, which was this disgusting headbanger’s venue. Just a little hall, and packed to the roof that night with about five hundred punks. We had to take the bus because the neighborhood out in Collyhurst was so bad you couldn’t take your car; the local kids would strip it as soon as you turned your back. It was like, urban removal at the absolute worst. Half the buildings around it were just cratered. The Pistols had played at the Free Trade Hall back in the summertime and I’d missed it. I don’t even remember what I was doing that day that I didn’t go, but I remember the next day the entire town was talking about it. Punk was all over the news by the time they came back in December: public enemy number one.”

“I can’t believe you were there,” Noel said wonderingly.

“Are you saying I’m old?” Clint laughed. “I can’t believe it either, looking back. It was such a moment, and everyone could tell. There was a literal mob of Perry boys out front throwing bricks at the freaks as we came in. They fucking tore them up from the sidewalk. You had to show your ticket to the police to get through the barricades. It was madness, but I just felt lucky to be there. I even had me jeans took in like a proper punk before I went,” he said, touching Noel’s baggy trousers.

“No, did you?”

“There weren’t no other way. You couldn’t buy punk clothes here like you could in London, you had to cobble’em together. I was in art school at the time. All over the city was boys making their flares over into drainpipes, or getting their girlfriends to do it. I had a girlfriend but she was a sculptor and didn’t have time for muckin’ about with needle and thread. So I did it meself.”

“Fuck me,” said Noel. “You were right in the middle of it.” 

“Oh yeah.” Clint laughed. “I had the Johnny Rotten haircut, the lot. It was a good place for a gay boy to be. Or a--whatever.”

“Really it was? Way back then?” Noel was fascinated, and Clint felt a bit like a dinosaur under his curious look. He shrugged.

“It just felt really normal at the time. It seemed like half the early punks were queers, and we were always in gay bars because it was the only place punks could buy a drink without getting glassed. Put a bunch of seventeen-years-old boys on amphetimines in a gay bar? There was all sorts going on, I can tell you.”

“I can’t even imagine it,” said Noel. “Was that...when was the first time you ever went with a lad?” 

“Not long after I first went with a girl.” Clint smiled, remembering. “His name was Leon Harvey. He was an art room kid like me, but really beautiful. He had these huge black canvases, they’d stab you through the eye. Everyone was in love with him. I have no idea what he was doing with me, because….” He looked at Noel in pretend seriousness. “I don’t know if you’ve realized this? But I wasn’t a very cool teenager.” Noel laughed out loud. “Right,” Clint said. “So I had no idea what I’d done to deserve this--this visitation. But fuck me if I was gonna mess it up, right? So we end up kissing behind those canvases at school, and one day after school we end up in my bedroom.”

“Fuck me. You pulled a ten on the first go.”

“I did. So we’re in my room, right, me and Leon. He’s got these enormous dark eyes like a Spaniard, and we’re both knelt on my bed, starkers. I’ve got the two of us in me hand, and he’s got me by the hair, right, twistin’ it, and it’s just--quite a scene. He’s about to come, he’s saying my name, it’s the best moment of my life--and at that moment me mam walks in, looking for dirty laundry.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. I mean, no mistaking what was goin’ on there.”

“What did you do??” 

Clint could see by his face that Noel understood what a disaster it had been. He squeezed his hand, and they spent a few minutes watching the men around them. It had the air of a house party, young people talking with old people, some shouting about sports or politics, not too many of them off their tits. It was so relaxed. It looked like a miracle after the vigilance of the street. Clint hadn’t realized how hostile the outside was until this moment, as he sat with his arm around Noel’s shoulder, drinking his ale like he would have done any night of the week with a girl. He sighed.

“What did we do? Finished, of course; it was already too late to stop. Then we laughed like loons, and cried a bit, then I sent him home through my bedroom window. I was really scared sick. My da and me was already having problems, and I knew Mam would tell him.”

Noel wrapped his hand around Clint’s knee. “Fucking hell. So what happened.”

“She told him,” Clint said simply. “It was...not good. I thought maybe she was sorry afterward that she told, because it was bad. I was gonna move in with a mate from school. I was bringing my shit down in a duffle bag a day or two after all this happened, and there’s my da at the table, mouth done up like someone stuffed him full of lemons. He’s got this look in his eye and…” Clint sighed again, remembering. 

“Me and my da, we were close when I was small. He’s...he’s really good. I hope you’ll meet him someday. But he didn’t know what to do. What’s an Irish Catholic postman going to do with a queer art boy for his kid? There had been a lot of rowing, and I just wanted out. And he didn’t want me, as far as I could tell. I mean, he wouldn’t even look at me. I thought he hated me. So I’ve got me little motorbike out front and me fucking school bag strapped on, and I’m coming down the stairs with me clothes in a bag. And there’s me da with his tea at the table, reading the sport pages.” Clint did an impression of his father’s posture. He’d remember it until the day he died. 

“So me mam looks at him, and she looks at me with me bag by the door. And she takes his cuppa--his favorite mug, that he uses every day--and she smashes it against the fucking chimney! We’re just staring, ‘cos she’ never done anything like that in her life. She’s a bit of a mouse, do you know what I mean? She looks to him for everything. But she says to him, “It’s gone now, Alan. Broke and done. How are you gonna get it back once you’ve smashed it?’”

“I thought she meant it was no use fixing me, that _I_ was broken at first. I was in a real state, and I wasn't thinking. But he just looks right at her for the longest time. Then he gets up, goes out and brings in me school bag. Takes me duffle out of me hand and goes up and puts ‘em on my bed. Then he tells me to sit down and makes us a cuppa, one for me and one for him. And that was the end of it. I’ve brought the boyfriends round same as the girls, ever since.” There was a long silence.

“Boyfriend, eh?” Noel asked. 

Clint blushed and shoved him with his shoulder. “Yeah. What about you? What was your first time with a boy?”

“Nothing so nice as that.” Noel frowned. “Lots of skulking around in public toilets, hoping that someone would notice me. Hoping they would and hoping they wouldn’t,” he corrected. He gave shrug and a harsh laugh: ashamed, Clint thought, and took his hand. 

“I didn’t know where to go,” Noel confessed. “I’d heard about it, that in certain places you could find blokes who would… Graham was the first one I ever spoke to, though. First lad I ever chatted up. Took a fat fucking line of speed to get my nerve up to do it, too.”

Clint could see the settled silence of Noel’s face, watching for a flicker of Clint’s distaste. Waiting for Clint to be disgusted by him. Dirty little nancy, fucking strangers in a public toilet. That’s what Noel thought of himself.

“And Graham brought you to me,” Clint said. 

“Yeah. Well done, Graham.” 

“Well done, Graham,”Clint said firmly. “Besides, I’ve done that too. Have you been to the toilets in Peel Park over in Salford? Those are best for getting the young ones,” he said, and bit Noel’s knuckles. They laughed, Noel’s mouth twisting wryly.

“Does your family know?” Clint asked.

“No.”

Clint looked at him curiously. It wasn’t unusual to be in the closet to your family, especially in the poor black and Irish neighborhoods like Oldham where Clint grew up, or Burnage where Noel lived. But Noel never talked about his family at all. Clint had picked him up from a bland brick house like a thousand others, but never seen anyone there. And yet Noel lived at home. His silence about it was absolute.

Noel was scowling down at his hands. Clint decided to let him shake out of it and kissed him on the forehead before heading to the loo.

Against the wall he saw two skinheads kissing, an old one and a young one. As Clint approached the young one slipped away to the bar with a tenner in his hand. The old one watched him go with a muzzy look of lust and wonder. Then he caught Clint looking and his face transfigured into pure aggression.

“You’ve got a problem?” he demanded. He was a massive fellow, as tall as Clint but with shoulders like a hanger and big hands covered with scars and tattoos. “Problem?” he repeated. Clint wondered what he was on about. It was a gay bar, after all. They were all the same here.

“I think you’re a lucky man tonight,” Clint said, nodding toward the young skinhead standing next to the bar. Maybe more than just one night, he thought, judging by the expression that crossed the old one’s face as he looked at him. 

Clint slipped past and had his piss--an ordinary piss--but he got so antsy at the strange men eyeing each other that he went to the table and dragged Noel back with him. He shut them into a toilet cubicle, locked the door, kissed him hard and put him down on his knees. Noel went down so easy, making a little moaning sound. Clint held him by the hair and fucked his mouth then, long and deep, imagining it had been him who saw Noel first, just a dirty little nancy boy in a public toilet with his violent eyes and perfect mouth, waiting for somebody--for Clint--to notice him.

Sometimes Clint felt he spent so much time with the musical weirdos that he forgot it wasn’t really safe out there. Perhaps things were really getting worse like the newspapers said, or maybe it had just been so long since he’d been with a man long enough to feel visibly queer. For a long, long time, he just hadn’t thought about it too hard. That fall he had reasons to think.

One night he, Noel, and the Inspirals went downtown drinking after a long day in the studio. They’d spent eight or ten hours working on new songs until they hated the sight of each other, then gone downtown to get reacquainted when it was done. Steve stood wanly in a corner for a time and asked Martyn to take him home, so it was just Craig and Graham with him and Noel when they came out of the Castle and Falcon some time after twelve.

“I don’t remember where I left my car,” said Clint, turning in a circle. 

“I pushed it into the canal, didn’t I?” Graham said.

“Push you in the canal,” Clint replied. “Seriously though. Where.” Noel came up sneakily behind him and began digging for his keys in Clint’s front pockets. “Not you, twat,” Clint said, snatching them out of his hand. “Graham, are you good to drive?

“Better’n you, I think,” Graham said doubtfully.

“I can drive!” Gilly volunteered.

The rest of them told him in unison to fuck off. Gilly pretended to be surprised by this, and there was a lot of general dicking around until Clint was distracted by a disturbance nearby. Several dark figures were on the corner but headed their way, tense and shouting. A fight brewing, about to break out any second. “Let’s just get out of here,” Clint said. “We’ll just walk until we find it.” He began to herd them in the opposite direction.

Gilly grabbed his jacket. “Clint, we can’t,” he said. “It’s girls.”

He was right, Clint saw as they drew closer. Two butch girls, just a little older than Noel. One of the them was already bleeding, and her friend tried to cover her head as they walked, her face tight with rage and fear. Behind them were a bunch of men in tight jeans and tall boots, button down shirts and hair like convicts. Clint put Noel behind him without thinking.

But it wasn’t Noel that Clint had to worry about. Gilly was just a kid, hot headed and righteous and far too innocent to be properly scared. He shoved ahead and spoke to the skinheads.

“What the fuck is wrong wi’ you?” he demanded. “Beating up girls? Can’t handle a bit of fucking competition?”

“Shut up, Gill,” Clint said quietly.

“No, really. Fucking lemonheads. Think she’s got a bigger dick than you? Scared of a little competition? Lez-bashing bunch of fucking pussies.”

Clint collared him and yanked him back. “Look at them,” he hissed in his ear, and pointed him toward the bleeding girls. “Get them out of here, _now_. Then go home.” He shoved Gilly in their direction, and thank god, he went. That left Clint, Graham, and Noel facing a small mob of skins with rocks and who knew what else--a fucking lot of them, in thick leather jackets--and one of them, right at the front, with shoulders like a hanger and hands covered in tattoos and scars. Clint’s mouth dropped open as he recognized the old skinhead from the Rembrandt.

Reflexively he looked in the crowd for the young one, his lover. He wasn’t there, of course. The old skinhead flushed as he recognized Clint, and his eyes darted round to his friends. In the closet, then. Clint knew there was such thing as openly gay skinheads but this was not one of them. He stared at the old skinhead as hard as he could, willing him to hear the words, _Help a fella out._ Then he stepped forward and grinned a crooked grin.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I’d love to stay and take the piss but...the truth is we’re a bit famous. I don’t think the police would let you alone after.” 

A smaller one with a face like a riot at the old one’s elbow scoffed. “A bit famous, eh? That’s a new one, fucker. Come here and let me famous you.”

“No. No, he’s right. I seen ‘em. They’re in a band,” the old skinhead said. Clint shook his head in momentary confusion and looked around. Of course they were in a band, he realized; anyone could tell by the way they dressed alike and stood so close. Graham even carried his guitar on his shoulder.

“What are you on about, Desi?” the riot-faced one said. “Are you turning into a fuckin’ pansy?”

“No, they are. I seen ‘em in… in...”

“In New Music Express,” Clint supplied. It was the most popular music magazine in Britain and they had in fact been in it: a little postage stamp review of a London show last month. _That’s good,_ he thought toward Desi.

“Yeah, they been on the radio,” Desi said, looking at Clint. “On….”

“John Peel,” Clint said. “BBC 1.” He looked hard at Desi. It wasn’t a lie. John Peel was the coolest DJ in Britain and he was playing the Inspiral’s new EP off the hook on Tuesday nights. They’d just recorded a live session with him, and it was going to release as a demo. He fucking loved them.

“Yeah,” said Desi. “On John Peel.”

“What the fuck do you know about John fucking Peel,” said the vicious one.

Desi was still staring at Clint. _Missus_ he mouthed at him, guessing wildly.

“My missus is into all that blag,” said Desi. Thank god there was a missus, Clint thought. “She’s mad about ‘em. The, uh--”

“Inspiral Carpets,” Clint said. Desi gave him a startled, dirty look, as if to say, _you expect me to make them believe that??_ Clint shrugged. Desi opened his mouth to speak.

“Can we get some tea and biscuits if these lot are gonna natter on all day?” asked another of the skins. “I’m gonna fuckin perish over here.”

Desi’s face flashed in a smile, transforming its raw lines into handsomeness. “Yeah, Arch. You owe me a chips.” 

“I do not owe you a chips, cunt,” Arch shot back. “You bought me chips, I bought you cigs.” The tide had turned, though. They lost interest and began to wander away, all except the riot-faced one who hung back to give them a two-fingered salute before following his friends. 

No one moved until they were gone.

“How...how did you do that,” Graham said, angry in his fright.

“I don’t know,” Clint said. “I--I knew him.” He was shaking now that it was over, and felt like he might be sick. He pulled Noel tight and kissed his forehead, just to reassure himself, and found him cold as ice. “Do you want me to drop you home?” he asked.

Noel shuddered. “No. I want to go to yours.” 

“Good. Me too. Now I--I just need to find my fucking car.” Clint sat down suddenly before he fell. He covered his face with his hands, and let Noel hold him until the shaking passed.

Just a few weeks later they were followed by a workman outside a construction site in Longsight. 

They’d spent the afternoon downtown at Eastern Bloc Records and come out with a load of German electronica, then gone for Jamaican hand pies at the Longsight market. The colonial immigrants that ran the fruit and vegetable stalls often had fantastic ganja brought in from the islands, too, so they poked around buying a bit of this and a bit of that and headed back to Clint’s car with a bag of secondhand records, some weed in Noel’s jacket, and a sack of mangoes. They were arguing about if Dusty Springfield or the Marvelettes would go on the turntable first when a grimy man turned off his worksite, fell in beside Noel, and began heckling them. 

He made fun of Noel’s white jeans and blue trainers. He made fun of Clint’s hair and tracksuit jacket. Then he called them Ernie and Bert for their difference in height. Christ, this guy was a fucking child. Clint moved to put himself between Noel and the stranger--he didn’t want this guy anywhere near him. But Noel shoved him away with a look that shocked Clint with its hostility. What the hell was going on?

“Ah, is that how it is,” the stranger said. He was hustling to keep up with them, panting a bit over his fat belly. “Big faggot and little faggot. Have ye got a little one hid in yer clothes someplace?”

Clint didn’t understand why Noel was putting up with it, and tried to ask him about it under his breath. Noel just shot a dirty look that Clint couldn’t read. The man continued to say disgusting things, following them down the street. Gradually Clint realized that he was speaking only to Noel.

“I hope he’s at least got money, ‘cos he’s old and plain as fuck,” the man was saying confidentially, as if Clint couldn’t hear him. “And a bit of a fairy, isn’t he. At least that means you’re the lad, right? At least that, ye wee fucking poof. Noelie, you aren’t letting this gowk bugger you up the--”

Finally, Noel had enough at that. He stopped in the street to face the stranger. His whole body was electric, and his face so forbidding that Clint wouldn’t have dared speak to him if he didn’t know him. The stranger just gave a leer and hitched his belt. 

“How’s your mam, then,” the stranger said. “She need a man about… to take care of anything?” 

Suddenly Clint understood. He looked back and forth between them. It was easy to mistake at first because they were so different in coloring, but it was all there--the heavy brows and high fine bones under the fat, and even, Clint thought, Noel’s perfect lip gone soft with lewdness. Christ. This man was Noel’s father.

They faced each other in the street and Clint didn’t know how he had missed it. Noel’s father stood astride the sidewalk, hand on his belt, and looked him up and down with a look that made Clint’s blood run cold. 

“What about it?” he said. “D’ye need a man about the ‘ouse at all?” Long second ticked by as they stared each other down. At last Noel spat at his feet.

“You can burn in hell,” he said, and he walked away. Clint walked beside him, silent for blocks while Noel lit one cigarette and threw it away, lit another and threw it away, and ran his hands over and over his face and hair. His brows were drawn together, his nose looking harsher than ever under the restless movement of his hands. Now and then he pulled and twisted a lock of hair around his finger. Clint had a feeling he wasn’t seeing a thing.

At last Clint pulled him into a side street and then a dead end alley. Noel came into his arms easily, though Clint had been afraid he was going to resist. He just laid his head on Clint’s shoulder and panted like a child. Clint rubbed his cheek. Against his belly he could feel Noel’s heart thundering. He rubbed his back in circles, absently. Noel sighed and shuddered.

“I don’t run into him very often,” Noel said. “You’d think in a city this size you never would….” He shook his head.

“Fuck him,” Clint said. 

Noel nodded without speaking. Clint kissed his forehead, and together they stood, slowly learning to breathe again. After a time Noel pushed away.

“I need to go,” he said. “I...I have things I need to do, stuff I forgot…”

“Noel.” 

“No. I just--we’re still doing Leeds tomorrow, right? I’ll be at the studio at four to help pick up, I just--”

_“Noel.”_

“I won’t forget. Everything’s okay, I’ve just got to go--”

Clint watched him return to the main street, pulling his swagger on like a jacket. By the time he left the alley he looked as cocky as ever, head tipped up to catch the sky, walking like he owned the street.

 _Fuck._ Clint looked down at the mangoes and Dusty Springfield. He didn’t want them without Noel. Everything was shit. He threw it all in the back of his car and drove out to his studio at the mill where the Inspirals rehearsed. He mixed and remixed the first song on their next demo, the one that was going to nail their record deal, until it sounded like a pile of steaming dog shit, and then he set it on fire. He pulled out long masses of expensive tape and held it in fistfuls over his lighter, flinching only a little as it curled into shreds of dirty black nothing in his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/07/gayrights.communities
> 
> https://medium.com/cuepoint/booze-blood-and-noise-the-violent-roots-of-manchester-punk-af8092bcaac3


	7. Chapter 7

Clint spent three days in the studio working on the single he’d burned, during which he neither saw or heard from Noel. He made the guys come in to re-record everything the morning after the Leeds gig, telling them he’d decided it needed another take. This time he started with a clearer vision--a bouncy melody and cheeky lyric but with a brutal delivery that made it wrench in the chest--and made them do it over and over.

“Gilly, it’s heavier than that. Give me less on the high hat, more of the kick. Steve, dial it back a bit, would you? It’s not the fuckin’ Clash.” 

“What was wrong with the old one?” Graham complained. “At least let’s hear it so we can talk about what you want different.”

“Nope, we’re done wi’ that one,” Clint said. “Listen, I’ve slowed it down a bit, here’s the click track. It’s got teeth, okay? And it’s not in a fucking rush.” They pissed and moaned and eventually got it right. He made them all go home and spent two days mixing it from the bottom up while he lived on takeaway from the Egyptian grocery around the corner and small dabs of speed to keep his edge on.

On the morning of the third day he drove home, crashing hard. His gran was out digging the last of the flowers from her window boxes when he pulled in to the drive. He kissed her vaguely and moved away before she could pat him on the back again; her concerned look made his eyes sting with exhaustion. He made himself a cuppa and sat down to make sketches, but fell asleep before it was cold.

He slept for hours, and had dragged himself to the table to work on T-shirt designs when he heard Noel’s feet on the stairs. He had several panicky thoughts in the seconds that followed, from a stab of sheer joy to a wish that he was still in his jeans and proper shaved. Instead he was in sweats and a ribby jumper from his gran, sleeves pushed up and his wrists marked with paint. He wished he was doing important and interesting things, but instead he was still wiping turpentine from his brushes when Noel walked in.

Clint didn’t know what he expected to see. Noel didn’t look like he’d been in a fistfight or on a three day bender; he looked calm and well fed, and his color was good. Clint had just time to be relieved before Noel walked into his arms, buried his face in his chest and said, “I’ve come back for the mangoes.”

Clint gave a shaky laugh. “Do you still have my weed?” he asked. Noel pulled a bag from his jacket and smiled, brilliantly. 

A short time later they were curled up on the love seat, sticky with mangoes and getting high. Clint held the spliff and blew slow lungfuls of smoke into Noel’s upraised mouth. _Dusty in Memphis_ played in the background. After a while Clint concluded that weed was boring and began to kiss Noel’s hair with greater concentration. Noel lifted up his face, much as he had done for the shotgun, and Clint quietly blew his own breath into Noel’s lungs.

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” he murmured.

“I was coming back,” Noel said. “I just needed some time to think, like.”

“What did you do?”

“Pretty much lived in my room. Slept a lot, thought a lot. Let my mam feed me up.” 

Clint ran a hand over Noel’s ribs. He was far, far too thin. “What was it like?” he asked.

“I missed you. Thought about you a lot. Thought about us.”

“Yeah?” Clint was kissing his temple and jaw now, and hardly heard what he was saying.

“Yeah.” Noel squirmed as Clint reached his ear. “And I thought...ngh. I thought that...that I want you to do it to me.”

Clint stopped kissing for several seconds while his brain caught up. “You want me to fuck you.”

“Yeah. The real way.”

“It’s all the real way, Noel.”

“I know, but--”

Clint pulled back. “Is this about proving that your da was right about you being a fag? ‘Cos I’m not fucking doing it.”

“No! I just…”

“Then what? You never wanted it before.”

“I never thought of it before.” Noel coloured slightly. “I swear I didn’t! I mean...you give really good head, right? It’s not like I was missing something.” 

“You’re just turning my head with flattery now,” Clint said.

“Maybe,” Noel admitted, “but I’m not lyin’. Clint, I just...I went home and got pissed by meself in my room, right?”

“You shouldn’t do that,” Clint said automatically. Noel ignored him.

“So I’m lying there on me bed, kind of out of it and dreamy like, and I hear him, my old fella, d’you know what I mean? And he’s saying, You’re not letting this gowk do you up the arse, are you? And I just thought...Why am I not?

Clint laughed. “You’re mad.”

“No, I’m serious!” Noel cried. He was laughing too, but turned so that Clint could see he meant it. “I thought about it for just a minute, about being there on my back for you...and suddenly it was all I could think about. Clint--”

Clint could hear the heaviness of real wanting in his voice and relented. “Okay. Alright. I just…I don’t do it very often, you know?”

“But you know how?”

“Yeah, of course. But...it’s not a fucking joke, Noel.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Noel said simply. He put his ear down on Clint’s chest for the space of several breaths. “Do you not like it?” he asked.

“No, I do. I just...if a guy isn’t careful, if he’s all into being a hard man and isn’t paying attention...it isn’t very nice. You can get really hurt.”

Noel bent to listen to his heart again, and Clint began to wonder what he heard there. “You had a bad time,” he said. “Someone hurt you?”

“Maybe once or twice,” Clint said uncomfortably. “It’s just...there’s a bit of seriousness to it at first.”

Noel was silent, thinking. 

“Do you not want me, then?” he asked.

“What? No. That’s not what I mean at all.” Clint became aware of Noel’s weight on his body, the hard lines of him under his clothes and the clean boy-and-shampoo scent of him. “I do,” he said definitely. “Every which way. Always.”

“Good,” said Noel, and began to work his way under Clint’s shirt.

“What, _now_?”

“No time like the present,” said Noel, nuzzling.

Clint kissed his foolish face. “There’s things you need to do first, silly.”

“I did. I’ve done ‘em,” Noel protested.

“The fuck you did! How would you know what to do?”

“I stood in the gent’s toilets in Peel Park until somebody asked to suck me dick, and then I made him tell me about it,” Noel said, grinning.

“Jesus. Did you let him do anything to you?”

“Of course not,” Noel said righteously. “I’m saving it, me.”

“Christ.” Clint didn’t know what to think. “You must have given him a heart attack. Little cocktease, that’s what you are.”

“Are you joking? That geezer won’t wank to anything but me for a month. He should have paid me for it.” Noel suddenly transformed to look six years younger, casting his eyes down uncertainly and then looking up through his lashes in bashful eagerness. “‘But...mister, what do I do if it’s too big?’”

“Fucking hell. You’re never leaving the house alone again. Get in the bed,” Clint ordered. Noel positively skipped to the bedroom. Clint fumbled around for things they might need--water, towels, a wet flannel--and went back to find Noel sitting bare under the covers with an expression somewhere between nervous and utterly wired for sound. Clint dumped his stuff and went to dig in his dresser for an old tub of lube.

“What have you got that for?” Noel said, scandalized. “‘Ave you been keeping something from me all this time?”

“Let a man have a few secrets,” Clint told him. He removed his clothes and threw himself down in the narrow bed.

In a few minutes Noel was stretched out beside him, kissing absorbedly and hard as a rock. Clint ran his fingers down his belly, palmed his erection once or twice, and began to scratch his balls. Noel made a sound and spread his knees. Clint knew that he liked that, but he had never ventured very far. Some guys found they didn’t like to be touched back there at all, and he was halfway surprised when Noel arched forward with a little sound to get Clint’s hand back. He really did like it.

“Yeah?” he asked. Noel nodded. “Come here then.”

Clint sat up against the headboard and pulled Noel to straddle him, though the bed was so narrow his knees threatened to slide off. He lubed his fingers and held them up in a flat little pad for Noel to see. “I’m gonna put these where you can feel them, and you just do what feels good with ‘em. Okay?” Noel nodded.

Clint made a loose fist around Noel’s cock and gently began to work down from the back of his balls again. They both gasped as Clint touched his hole for the first time. Clint swirled his fingers over it and kissed his mouth, light as butterflies all over, letting Noel move into the pressure he wanted. Noel moved between his hands gently, then with increasing boldness, and his tissues slowly began to soften.

“Feel good, love?” Clint asked after a time.

“Yeah,” Noel said, eyes closed. Clint drew him closer.

“You’ll feel me more now. Like this,” he said, and pressed up. “You keep it the way you want it, okay?” 

Noel’s expression turned thoughtful, then relaxed. He slid in and out of Clint’s fist gently. Clint’s fingers felt as though they were slicked, squeezed, dragged--as if Noel were kissing them. Clint began to push a little harder. Noel made a deep, eager, helpless sound, and met Clint’s eyes. So fucking hot, Clint thought--and so easy. Noel’s cheeks were a high rose color, his chest stained dark red. “You looking fucking gorgeous,” Clint told him. 

Noel’s eyes pressed shut at the words, and the muscles of his arms stood out where he gripped the headboard. Clint wished he had another hand--had six hands--to touch him with. Noel worked himself deeper and firmer on Clint’s hands, until every breath was a ragged little moan and Clint’s head was spinning with the feel of his hand inside him.

“Love? Are you ready for me? D’you want more?”

“Fuck. Yes,” Noel gasped.

Clint eased out and lubed up, giving himself a few unnecessary strokes as he looked at Noel knelt over him, ready, waiting for his dick. He wondered, not for the first time, what he’d done to deserve this incredible, beautiful headwreck. Noel’s mouth quirked as he watched him. 

“Okay,” Clint gasped. “Okay. It’s the same thing here. You do what feels good and I’m just…” He waved a hand, out of words. He hoped to not come early, and that seemed like as much as he could manage.

Clint watched Noel’s face as he let his cock rub gently against his hole for the first time. Curiosity, and a gentle listening, and then his teeth digging into his lip.

“That’s nice,” Noel breathed. “Nicer than fingers, yeah?”

Clint laughed, breathless and helpless. “Yeah.” He reached up to kiss him. This was it, the two of them moving together, Noel working down on his cock with his lips open and lashes drooping. Christ. This was Noel, with Clint actually inside him, looking at him with those incredible eyes.

“Feels good,” Noel said, all breathy and soft. He looked suddenly shy and so fucking young. “Does it...does it you?”

“So good, love,” was all Clint could say. He couldn’t think about it, or he was going to come. Instead he tugged at Noel’s hips to make him go on. Noel moaned and swore as he began to move more freely. Clint wrapped a loose hand around his dick and kept up a ragged stream of praise.

After a time Noel began to gasp and cry out. “Fuck. Clint. I can’t--”

Clint understood. It was hard to let go with something inside at first. Scary. He kissed Noel’s sweaty face and laid him down. They came apart to do it, and Clint took a few minutes to breathe together, foreheads pressed tight. “All right?” he asked. Noel just pulled him on top and wriggled impatiently until Clint was inside again. Clint pushed up on his hands to look down at him, pale body all stretched out and hair darkening down his belly. He pulled Noel’s knees up around his hips and watched his eyes go wide. 

“I think...I think you’re gonna come like this, yeah?” he said with difficulty. Noel just nodded, wordless. Clint shook his head. He wanted to say more, but he couldn’t. 

Noel grinned, sweaty and haphazard, and stroked Clint’s arms. “Come on,” he said. “Give us a shove.”

After that Clint could only think about not coming. Paying attention to the pace and angle, listening for Noel’s response now that he’d found the right spot, giving it to him again and again while Noel made the most agonizing sounds. He looked down. Noel’s eyes were screwed shut and his teeth clenched tight, and Clint realized he was resisting coming. Fighting with the sensation and hanging onto his sense of control.

“Breathe, love,” he said. Noel’s breath stuttered out raggedly and he shuddered all over. Immediately he began to come, writhing and thrusting with the dirtiest moans imaginable. God, he was so fucking beautiful. “Christ. Yes. Noel,” Clint gasped. Finally, finally he could let go, could bury his teeth in that beautiful neck, could explode and give him everything until there was nothing fucking left. He came with Noel’s feet tucked around his arse and Noel’s name in his mouth and collapsed on his chest, still buried inside and heaving.

When he looked at Noel, he found him wide-eyed with shock, shivering. Poor love. It was so much more intense that way, with someone inside you. Nothing could really prepare you for it. Clint threaded an arm around him and stroked his hair and back. 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Oh my god. Clint.” 

Clint smiled to himself and stroked his back until the shivering ceased.

“Was...was that okay for you?” Noel asked. Christ, he sounded so fucking young and vulnerable. 

Clint pulled back to look at him, let him see the seriousness of his eyes. “Incredible. Amazing. You were perfect for me. So fucking hot, Noel.”

“I reckoned it must have been,” said Noel, his cocky grin beginning to reappear. “The way you were screaming my name and all.”

“You.” Clint went to pinch his backside, and they wrestled and snogged until they began to get sleepy and settled down with Noel’s head tucked into his shoulder.

“Clint,” Noel said quietly. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Clint looked at him, shy and naughty and full of wonder, with the sweat still damp on his hair and his come still drying between them. 

“That settles it,” Clint said. “We’re going to need a bigger bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBC_pdL-MLU


	8. Chapter 8

It was October before Clint found the bed he wanted in the papers; a wide wooden one with a low headboard that would fit under the eaves and four intriguing posts at the corners. He and Noel went to pick it up in a posh neighborhood and brought it back tied to the top of his car, with blankets rolled up under to protect the paint. The mattress itself he bought new, though, and had delivered like a proper grownup.

“How did you ever get a fuckin’ piano up here?” Noel puffed as they heaved the mattress up the stairs. 

“Slowly,” Clint said. “‘Ere, tip it to the left. No, the other left.” Noel didn’t seem to know his rights and lefts, and suddenly Clint thought he knew why he didn’t drive. 

“No seriously, how,” Noel demanded, bending down almost to his feet to get under the heavy thing.

“Four blokes, some particle board, a come-along and a keg,” Clint replied. “Fuck, this joint in the ceiling’s in the way. Okay, you lift your bit, mine goes down.”

There was a lot of general swearing, shoving, and crashing into stairwell walls. Finally they burst through the door and landed in a heap with Noel on the floor, mattress in the middle, and Clint on top. “There’d better be a fuckin’ keg at the end of this,” Noel said blackly.

“There’s a proper bed at the end of it,” Clint told him. 

“Is there a keg in the bed?”

“No, there’s _me_ in the bed, lazy arse. Come on, take a hand up and we’ll get the rest.” Noel took his hand, but only to yank him right back down and roll on top, pinning his arms and legs.

“You’re in the bed right now, see? What do we need to go down for?” he asked. Clint wrestled him off and dragged him down the stairs laughing, where they found Clint’s grandmother taking some air and looking at the pile of furniture rigged on Clint’s car.

His mother’s mother was a little woman, made even smaller now by age. Clint remembered when she had worked as a cleaning lady in the big offices downtown, but that was a long time ago. These days she watched a lot of daytime soap operas, walked to Our Lady and St Patrick for Mass every day, and talked in the street with two or three ladies who also had been widowed for ages. Nana thought Noel was adorable, and as far as Clint could tell she had no inkling of what their relationship really was. He could understand and be thankful that his mother had never told her about Leon Harvey or any of the others. But for how Nana explained to herself the noises that went on above her head at night, he couldn't imagine.

“That’s a gey big bed, love,” Nana told him as they began to unstrap it. 

“Biggest one I could find,” Clint agreed.

“Ye’ll need a wife to keep warm in a bed that big,” she said. 

“Yeah, Nan.”

He caught Noel's eye and grinned.

“Ye’ll have to be a mighty runner to catch her in it, though. And ye’ll need a better flat, too. Y' can’t be bringing home a wife to your granny’s garret, Clint.”

“Can’t I?,” Clint asked blandly. 

“No, love, no woman’s gonna live in that sort of place. Much as I love having you here, ye’ll need to move house to put that bed to good use. Won’t he, Noel?”

Noel coughed. “Yes, ma’m.” 

“Sit down with me, you two busy bees. Anyone'd think there was a race to get that kit upstairs. Keep an old lady company awhile,” she said. Clint grinned at the ready way Noel plopped onto an upturned bin by her chair, and went back to his car. He grabbed two bottles from the box of lager there and, after glancing back at the two of them sitting in front of Nana's blue window boxes, got his camera too. He found her quizzing Noel about his family. He handed over an open bottle without speaking.

“Charlestown, County Mayo,” Noel was saying. “Or near it, in the bog country outside town. Yeah, we go back every summer. Cousins? About a million. Some of them are over there, but a lot of them are here. Most of my aunties live round the corner from us.” Clint sat down on a dry bit of pavement and pulled his knees to his chest to listen. He’d never heard Noel mention his family before.

“How many aunties have you got, then?” Nana asked. 

“More than you, I’ll bet,” Noel said. “I’ve got six.”

“Seven!” Nana grinned in triumph, exposing her false teeth. “I had seven aunties when I was your age. My mother was one of thirteen back in Ballyboy. Have ye ever been to Offaly?”

“No, I haven't,” Noel said. “We take the ferry to Dublin and the train straight across to Castlebar, no muckin’ about. I guess we go just north of Offaly. Is that where you grew up?” 

“Oh, aye, and not only growing up. I stayed until all my children had grown and come over. Once my youngest left school and come over here to work in the cotton mills there weren’t much to stay for, with my man gone on already. Clint was just a wean at the time. Where are you in the cousins, Clint?” 

“Twelfth, I think.”

“How many grandchildren in all?” Noel asked her.

“Twenty-six,” Nana said proudly. “Fine healthy families all. My Kathleen, Clint’s mammy, was the only one who couldn’t do her duty and had only one. Poor Clint had no brothers or sisters.”

“Had to be son and daughter both, didn’t I?” Clint said to her.

“And you done well good at it, love. You’re your mother’s blessing and no mistake. And what about that, Noel? Can your old granny boast twenty-six living grandchildren?”

“I don’t think she can,” he admitted. “I think we’re only twenty-three. But can you name all yours? Mine can. I’ll give you a fiver if you do.” He gave a side glance to Clint, alight with mischief.

“Sure and I can!” she cried. “There’s Ted, Patrick and Will...wait no. It’s better if I start with me own in order and name theirs. Don’t count now, I haven’t started yet.” Noel shot a wink in Clint’s direction. “My Bridget came first, and she has Patrick, Maggie, Mary, and Luke--”

“I have an Auntie Bridget, too,” Noel interrupted. 

“Don’t distract me, young man, I see what you’re doing. Where was I?”

“My Aunt Bridget,” Noel said.

“Hush, you. After Bridget there’s Will. Will has Rob and young Will, Thomas, Anne and Kate. After Will there’s my Andy.”

“I thought Hal came after Uncle Will?” Clint asked. 

“No, honey, your uncle Hal is my fourth.” Nana groped in her cardigan pocket and came out with a packet of cigarettes. She shook out two and handed one to Noel. “Give us a light, Noely. I can name them all but I need to think, and don’t you talk to me while I’m a-doing it.” 

She stuck the fag between her lips and leaned out toward Noel on his bucket. He obediently struck a match, and Clint snapped a photo just as the two of them touched the flame, looking at each other and laughing.

One night after setting up for a gig Clint showed the band the sketches for a logo and album design he’d been working on. He wanted a simple, cheeky graphic, nearly too naughty to be sold in stores, just to make sure it was memorable. It needed to be single color: cheap to produce and recognizable from a distance. It needed to evoke their music without having the band name on it so that any kid would wear it just to be cool. Something everybody would buy. 

“This is brilliant,” Graham said, turning through the big cardstock pages of prototypes.

“It’s just silliness,” Clint said, in case the others didn’t like it.

“Brilliant silliness,” Martyn said. Clint grinned.

“D’you like it best with shades or without?” he asked.

“Both,” Graham said. 

The basic concept was just a simple drawing of a cow. He hardly remembered making it one night when Noel was away at a match and he was high as fuck by himself until he found it in the morning, as fresh as if someone else had done it. A cartoon cow done in a single black line, unmistakably male and unmistakably high. In some versions it stared, vacantly pleased, from eyes made of large loose spirally squiggles. In others the eyes were hidden by shades while its jaunty blackline lips puckered around a streaming spliff. A startled little _moo!_ was captioned just above its head. It was utter nonsense, and Clint loved it.

“Why a cow, though?” Gilly asked. 

“Exactly,” Graham said. “Why a cow. This is fantastic. Can we make it an album cover?”

“I was thinking of a T-shirt first,” Clint said. “Then an album jacket after so that when everyone sees it they already have the shirt and go, Oh, the cow has an album? I need it!”

“Are people going to just buy the shirt for no reason, though?” Gilly said.

“Of course they are, it’s a fucking cow that’s high out of its mind,” Noel chimed in from down the bar. “I don’t even like you guys and I’d buy it right now.” The entire band gave him the two-fingered salute in unison.

“Who’s that?" Gilly said, looking past them. “Does anyone know this kid? Looks like he’s lost or something.”

There was a gawky kid of sixteen or so hovering nearby, seeming to be working up the nerve to talk to them. There were several beats of silence as he walked closer, went away, paced back and forth and then made up his mind to come on. 

“That’s our kid, Liam.” Noel said at last. 

Clint looked at him. “You have a brother?” he asked. Noel had never once mentioned a sibling.

“I have two brothers,” Noel said noncommittally.

“Yeah, but your brother looks like _that_??” Graham asked. Clint elbowed him.

The kid was dark like Noel, with the same vivid eyes and fair complexion. He was rangy and awkward, with shoulders just starting to broaden. But Noel’s eyes were even bigger in his longer, finer face, with smoky starburst lashes round the edges--and light seemed to pour from his skin like water.

“Jesus,” somebody muttered. They all looked at Noel, waiting for him to speak.

“You made it alright,” he observed at last, without moving from his stool.

The kid scowled. “It’s just a bus.” 

Christ, Clint thought. Two of them, just the same.

“How was school?” Noel asked. The scowl deepened, but the kid said nothing. “Sister Bertha got you doing that history project?”

“Has Sister Bertha got me fuck,” the kid replied. They stared at each other like there was a fight going on. 

Noel’s eyes crinkled in a false smile. “How’s the cafeteria?” he asked, all sweet. The kid went red. At last Clint understood what Noel was on about; he was making fun of his brother’s age, embarrassing him for still being in school and showing them how young he was. He didn’t want to share his friends.

“Hey, thanks for coming out,” Clint said to the kid over Noel’s head. 

“Hi. I’m Graham.” Graham said, pushing ahead and breathlessly putting out his hand. “Hi. Hello.” God, what a slag, Clint thought. This kid was Graham’s own ex’s brother, and practically a child to boot. Clint pushed him away with a dark look and smiled at Noel’s brother.

“I’m Clint,” he said. The kid just gave him a venomous look. After awhile, seeing that he would say nothing, they went back to looking at the sketches. The kid stood around watching and listening, then drifted away. A few minutes later Clint noticed that Noel was unusually quiet, still on his bar stool and looking haggard.

“Are you alright?” Clint asked in his ear. “You look sick. Do you want me to take you home?”

Noel rubbed his eyes. “No. Take me...I want you to take me round back.”

“Ah.” Round back was an unlit alley where couples often went to be alone when the bogs were full. Clint led him there with one hand on the back of his neck and took him to the darkest spot.

“Your brother, he upsets you,” Clint said. 

“He makes me tired,” Noel said. His voice sounded thin, and he sagged against Clint’s hand. “He wears me out.”

Clint planted his feet wide to kiss him, secure in the shadow. “Poor love. Like this?” he asked.

“Like this,” Noel said. He put his back against the brick wall and guided Clint’s face down to his mouth with two hands. “Come on, make me forget.” Clint paused to get Noel’s jeans open and one hand around his little arse. Noel sighed. After that there was only Clint’s own noise of satisfaction and the stifled sounds of pleasure from others hidden in the dark. Noel opened his mouth up to him, shaky and still, and Clint didn’t even wonder what it was that he wanted to forget.


	9. Chapter 9

It had been ages since Clint had made the drive from Manchester to York in the daytime, sober. It seemed like they were always running in before a gig with a case of beer on the van floor, and driving home smashed to be in time for work in the morning. Here, in broad day, it felt like going to a different country. First came the dirty suburbs, and the peat and gritstone countryside east of Manchester, then a slow climb through the southern Pennines, with the Peaks making Clint’s throat ache in the distance. Then there was a slow drop into the Yorkshire vale; endless moorland and red brick towns pricked with church spires. 

What a shame that they were so seldom able to really see the places they went, Clint thought, craning to watch a high tor in the distance. Would it be like this when they were in Germany, Japan, or the States? What was the use? No, when they had money and success it would be different, he decided. They would be able to take the time to really be places.

Noel had never made the drive at all by the look of him; he gawked out the window like a kid in the backseat while Graham and Clint talked in the front like his mam and da on holiday. They were going talk with a label and hopefully, Clint thought, to sign a deal.

“So who is this guy anyway?” Graham asked.

“Tony,” Clint said, probably for the fourth or fifth time. Graham was a great guitarist but memory was not his strong suit. “Tony and Gerri. Their surname has a K but I can’t pronounce it; it’s Czech or Polish or something. They’re proper English, though.”

“And what’s the label?”

“Red Rhino,” Clint said patiently. “It comes out of their shop warehouse, and they’re part of The Cartel distribution coop. You know them. Cartel launched Joy Division, Depeche, The Smiths.” 

“Oh. Fuck. They’re good.”

“Yeah, they’re good. The Cartel pushes product to ninety locations all over Britain. That’s why we’re going. The preliminary offer Red Rhino sent us is good, but we can get them to do better. I think we can get them to front more cash for the next EP based on sales of the John Peel Session, and I think we can get better royalties too. I know what Little Angel's getting from them, and it’s better than what they offered us.”

“And if we can get it?” Graham asked.

“Then we’ll sign.” Clint grinned. He’d signed other bands before, but not his own. This was much more exciting. “Probably for a two year, two record deal, or maybe one EP and an album. That gives us some room to develop but doesn’t put us too deep in the hole.”

“But you can’t sign anything, can you?” Noel asked suddenly from the back. “Don’t you need everyone in the band to sign individually?”

Clint looked at Graham. Graham just shrugged; it was bound to come out eventually, his look said. Clint took a deep breath.

“Strictly speaking, the Inspiral Carpets are Graham and me. Gilly’s still too young to be signatory to a legal agreement, so the two of us sign,” he explained, and watched Noel’s brows draw together. 

“Yeah, but the others. Martyn and Steve, what about them?”

“Well, Martyn is new. He got here just a couple of months before you did. How many bassists did we have before him? Eleven? He’s looking good and he might stick, but it would be madness to put him on the legal documents so soon. He’s a contract musician, at least for now.”

“But Steve?”

Clint sighed and rubbed his face. Noel looked so innocent back there, and so interested, and Clint got the feeling that he was an older brother about to share some bad news. He looked at Graham to go on.

“In the beginning nothing was documented,” Graham said, turning round to look at Noel in the backseat. “Just guys playing in garages and pubs. It was me, Gilly, Steve, and a couple of others just taking the piss.”

“When I came, The Inspiral Carpets didn’t have anything,” Clint added. “They got paid in beer most of the time, and they lost money on the earliest recordings.”

“The songwriting got a lot better when Clint started to whip us into shape,” Graham said. “We started to feel like we could go someplace.”

Clint tried to explain how it had been, aware that it sounded fucking terrible. “At first everybody was writing songs. Steve’s were pretty good. But Graham and I kept on working and getting better, and Steve just coasted along doing the same stuff. Graham and I started to really gel as a writing team, seeing a new direction to the music, you know, and Steve...just stopped bringing new songs. In the earliest demos legal status didn’t matter. But then we were getting ready to put out Planecrash it was time to make some decisions. And one day we just...decided. We incorporated when Steve wasn’t there.”

“Fuck me. You did the dirty on a mate?”

“Well. Yeah. But Noel, if you knew the number of good bands who die because of internal conflicts! I’m not doing that. You can’t lose your career to one person. The ones on the papers have to be the ones you can trust.”

“Is Steve a bad apple though?”

Clint thought. “I think he wants to control the creative process but he doesn’t want to contribute to it. He doesn’t see why if we’re the ones writing, we drive the direction of the band.”

“Why?” Noel asked. “How else would it be?”

Clint looked at him in the mirror. “It can be hard for a singer to see what the other people in a band are contributing,” he said.

Graham snorted. “That’s diplomatic.”

“Well, I never met a singer who didn’t think he was the most important person in the band,” Clint admitted. “And I think he’s upset that I get paid twice, to be honest.”

Graham looked at him in surprise. “Is he?”

“Wait, you do?” Noel asked.

“Well, I work twice.” Clint said. He could see by Noel’s expression that he didn’t understand. “Look, I’m the manager, and I’m also a band member. This is how it works: first a band pays its expenses. Then management takes twenty percent. Then the rest is split equally among the band.” 

“Wait a fucking minute. So you’re telling me that if I'm Charlie Watts, I make the same money as Mick Jagger?”

“Well, no, because Mick Jagger writes and Charlie doesn’t. Songwriting credits are a whole different pool, and that’s where the real money is. But if you could imagine a band where writing credits are either split equally or nobody writes anything, yeah. That’s the way it would be.”

“But if you’re in the band, and you write most of the songs, and on top of that you manage...that could end up being a lot of money.” Noel said thoughtfully.

“If you’re successful, yeah. It could.”

Noel looked at Graham. “Don’t that bother you at all?” he demanded. Graham laughed.

“I don’t want to fucking do it. I just want to play tunes, and I don’t mind paying him so I can do it. Without a good manager you’re still sitting in the pub on a Tuesday night, d’ you know what I mean?”

Goodramgate was a long, curving high street in the city centre of York. They found Red Rhino Records in an arch-fronted building with concrete lintels that made it look like it was hiding under a bad hat. School had just got out, so the shop was full of teenagers flipping through record bins. A kid dressed up like Robert Smith rung up sales at the counter, looking like he could hardly endure the rest of the shift before he slit his wrists. They got in line to ask for Tony.

The kid in front of them was a boy about fifteen in a wedge haircut and Fred Perry clothes. “Do you have any Kylie Minogue?” he asked.

“No,” said Robert Smith. The kid pointed mutely at a four foot high poster of Kylie Minogue just behind the register. Robert Smith rolled his eyes. “I’m not selling any fucking Kylie Minogue, alright? Go find something decent and I’ll let you pay. Next.”

“Is Tony in?” Clint asked.

Robert Smith rolled his eyes as if this, too, was part of the agony of his existence and went to the back. While he was gone Clint asked Noel in an undertone if he didn’t want to fuck off for a while. “It’s going to be boring. You could go see the city or something. There’s shops and the cathedral, you’d like it.”

“No way. I want to see this,” Noel said.

“Oh.” A warm sensation like light filled Clint’s chest. Noel wanted to watch him work. “Okay.”

Tony had a long horselike face and a boundless enthusiasm for new music. Clint had met him a number of times and liked him; he had a good eye for talent and genuinely loved scouting new bands. In fact, he just loved people, full stop. He welcomed them to the shop like it was his living room, which, Clint figured, it probably was. Guys like this never went home; work was too much fun. Tony greeted Graham by name even though they had never met before, and then turned to Noel with a question in his eyes.

“Noel Gallagher, my assistant,” Clint said. 

“Aren’t you the fancy one with an assistant,” Tony said. “Can you have him get us a coffee across the way?”

“Can I fuck,” Noel replied, giving him a dirty look. Clint coughed. 

“We’re here to discuss a recording offer, Tony, but it looks like you’re busy. Maybe it was Gerri we were supposed to see?”

Tony laughed. “Aye, that’ll be Gerri. I’m good for nowt on the contracts. She’s down at the warehouse, about a half a mile that way. Parking there’s a bitch, though.”

“We’ll walk,” Clint said. “We’ve just had a long drive.”

“Can I get you a coffee for the walk, Clint?” Noel asked. They all turned to look at him, and he gave a single coquettish bat of his lashes. Clint choked, tried to make a decent goodbye, and they stumbled onto the street laughing like loons.

Red Rhino’s place on Eldon Street wasn’t really a proper warehouse, just two adjoining flats in a long row of terraces. They found it stacked to the ceiling with records, two-tone blasting down the street, and half a dozen kids industriously assembling press packets.

“Oh no, I can’t let Tony do the contracts. We’d be skint in a month!” Gerri said as she led them to the quieter of the two flats. “He’s A&R and the front face of marketing, and I’m the rest. Someone’s got to have a head for business, aye?” 

“They really do,” Clint said.

He sat for a long time reading the contract she presented to him. Graham stared at the album sleeves on the wall, but Noel sat close to Clint’s elbow and carefully watched everything he did. Now and then Clint would quietly point out a bit that he thought Noel ought to notice. It was a pretty standard medium-low offer, the sort of thing you’d see for an unproven band beginning to show momentum. “Do you know how many units of the Peel Session we moved in the past three months?” he asked her curiously. 

Gerri shrugged. “A few thousand.”

“Ten thousand,” Clint said. “I’d like to see this royalty rate higher. You’re going to be doing a lot of volume.” 

“I can do sixteen percent,” Gerri said.

“Sixteen? You’re not Creation Records, Gerri,” Clint said gently. “You’re not going to be spending a mint on marketing and promotion. In fact this budget looks pretty modest. I think twenty would be fair.” 

Gerri thought for a long time. “Eighteen,” she said at last. Clint pulled a red pen out of his pocket, struck out the old numbers and wrote in the new ones, and went on reading.

“What happens if the company dissolves?” he asked presently.

“What?” 

“Usually there’s a clause providing for reversion of rights in the case of dissolution. I don’t see it here. If we don’t have it, there could be a legal battle among your creditors for our licensing rights.”

“We’ve never had a client ask for that before,” she said, as if the idea offended her.

“I am,” Clint said levelly. 

“Write it in,” she said, waving her hand. Clint made a notation in the margin and went on.

“And an expiry date,” he added.

“Pardon?”

“We commit to delivering the recording as described within the budget given,” Clint said, “and you commit to releasing it as described--but within a given time frame. So we don’t end up stalling out while waiting for you to deliver the campaign. There’s no timeline here.”

“Nine months.”

Clint laughed. “A lot can fucking happen in nine months. That’s forever to a band. Three.”

Gerri was looking like she wished he hadn’t come. “Five.”

“Thank you, Gerri. That’s lovely.” They were nearly at the end. There was one sheet left at the bottom of the stack that Clint had never seen before. “What’s this?” he asked.

“We’ve recently opened a publishing arm. Each writer or writing team can sign individually to help leverage income from radio, soundtracks, commercial use and so on.” 

Graham’s head turned in interest for the first time. Clint held up a hand and read carefully.

“This is a joke, right?” he said after a moment. “You must be fucking joking.” Noel put a hand on his knee, telling him to ease down. Clint squeezed it and took a deep breath. Gerri was looking vaguely uncomfortable but fronted it out.

“Is there a problem?” she asked. 

“Yeah, this offer is a fucking problem. Industry standard is a fifty percent split between artist and publisher. This document offers 20% royalties on every song I write, on a thirty year term? How do you sleep at night?”

“It’s optional,” she said.

“Too right, it’s optional. No fucking thank you. In fact…” He looked at the contract, marked up with his own red writing. It didn’t look so good anymore. Something about this whole thing made him queasy.

Gerri interrupted, seeing that he was thinking of walking out. “Mr. Boon, we have a band coming up on a three week European tour next month.”

Clint wrenched his mind away from his outrage. “Yeah?”

“The EP Planecrash was entirely produced and distributed by yourself, correct? The Inspiral Carpets own the rights exclusively?”

“Yeah. Yes, that’s right.”

“If you’d like to do a limited reissue under the Red Rhino imprint we could get you on that tour. You’re similar enough to share audience appeal, but different enough so you’ll stand out. It’s a nice tour of midsize clubs in France, Germany, Belgium. A good chance to expose yourself to European audiences.” 

Clint sat back and unfolded his legs. Under the sheaf of paper he was still gripping Noel’s hand. “Tell me more,” he said.

“Because it’s short notice we’d have to go back to the original offer of royalties. And take fifty percent of all revenue. The merch, sales, and everything, though only for a limited term. But it would get you out in front of audiences by the end of the year with a product to sell, and start your name in Europe.”

Clint thought. “This is a subdeal that expires in a short term? Say, the first of December? And the licensing of Planecrash applies only to a limited number of units?” 

“That’s right.” 

It was a good fucking offer. Clint argued with her for a while about expensing the trip and, after a long time, they signed the offer with Clint’s amendments and a handwritten addition about the reissue. They found themselves on Eldon Street with a signed copy in hand, starving, and wishing they had remembered to ask for a good pub. They began walking back to the high street. Clint wondered vaguely if he was wobbling. He wondered if he’d done right.

“I can’t think anymore,” he said.

“But you did it,” Graham said. “You did really, really good.”

“Yeah?” he said. He didn’t know what he’d done. He was suddenly afraid that he’d made a terrible mistake, but couldn’t tell what it was.

“It was amazing,” Noel said. Clint looked at him. “Amazing,” Noel repeated. Noel’s hair was rumpled from running his hands through it, his lips flushed pink, and his eyes were starry with wonder. He looked like Clint had just slain him a dragon. Clint felt a blush creeping over his face.

“Oh,” said Clint. “ _Oh._ Well. if that’s the sort of thing that turns you on, stay close. It’s going to get wild.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a very carefully researched, wildly irresponsible blend of fact and fiction. The actual legal and financial arrangements of The Inspiral Carpets is not known to me, though it's true they didn't seem to suffer (much) financially or creatively from the departure of Steve Holt. The description of band dynamics is fairly close to Clint and Graham's own later descriptions, with some amplification. 
> 
> The Inspiral Carpets did sign with Red Rhino Records in the fall of 1988. The rough outlines of this recording contract are period-appropriate, but of course the details are invented. Tony and Gerri K are real people, as are the locations and buildings. Tony's personality is fairly evident in his obituaries and tributes; Gerri's I have inferred as his natural complement.
> 
> The Robert Smith kid at the counter is actually a shout out to Pete Burns, the singer for Dead or Alive who memorably worked the counter in fellow Cartel label/shop Probe Records, in Liverpool. https://www.nme.com/news/music/dead-alive-singer-pete-burns-died-aged-57-1759929
> 
> For an exploration of the explosion and influence of indie labels in the 80s, check this out. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/29/how-indie-labels-reinvented-british-music-rough-trade-mute-factory-records


	10. Chapter 10

Noel came to find the Inspirals at the Dover ferry terminal on their way back from France. 

The transit van was flagged for examination at the border, as had happened at every single one they’d crossed. Frontier control was suspicious of bands, Clint had learned; all those instrument cases and amplifiers were a great place for drugs or cash, or so they must have thought. It took him some time to realize why three or four agents turned the van inside out at every crossing. At last the penny dropped when the West Germans brought out their sniffer dogs; he elbowed Graham and they’d rolled with laughter at the idea that the Inspiral Carpets could need more than a pocket for the drugs they could afford to carry.

Well, that had changed a bit in the ensuing weeks. Clint had begun to make his own sweep of the vehicle before each frontier control stop. But he remembered to make the band take or give away everything they had on their last night in France, and there was nothing to find in their pockets. There were just the dozen cases of duty-free liquor they’d bought on the ferry and five blokes longing to be home.

Clint was in the passenger seat with a fistful of passports when he caught sight of Noel, leaning against one of the massive steel uprights with a styrofoam cup in his hand. He looked absolutely tiny in the ocean of tarmac, with the ragged chalk cliffs rising up behind him. 

“Fuck. Take these.” Clint shoved the passports into Graham’s lap and pushed the van door open into the spitting wind. 

They stood for a long time looking at each other. Noel’s hood had blown down, and his hair was clotted with rain. “You must be mad,” Clint told him. 

“You said it was the Duke of Normandie from Calais at eleven,” Noel said.

“It was. We did. But--”

Noel shrugged. “Felt like a train ride, didn’t I.” He lifted his styrofoam cup. “Did you know the Port of Dover has the best hot chocolate in her Majesty’s service? The lady there told me all about it.”

“Jesus, Noel.” Clint gestured at the massive port, the hundreds of cars rolling off the ferry. “You could have missed us. I don’t even know how you got to the roll-off decks on foot. Look at the size of this place. What if I hadn’t seen you?”

“I didn’t want to wait at home anymore, though. Did I,” Noel said. He looked at Clint, blinking away the rain dripping from his brows.

“No,” Clint said, and took a deep breath. He stepped forward and put a hand on Noel’s hip. “Mad fucker,” he murmured. “I missed you.” Noel let their foreheads make a little steeple in the rain, and Clint felt the breath running in and out of him, and the roar of lorries going by. After a time there was the sound of boots on tarmac. A control agent was coming toward them, clipboard in hand and brows drawn. “Fuck, come on,” Clint said, and took him to where the band had emptied out of the van so that sniffer dogs could scrabble all over their equipment and agents could dump the floor mats into the rain.

“Sorry mate, no room for extra roll-ons,” Graham shouted as they came up to the van. “Foot passengers please pass to the left, another vessel will be along presently!” 

“Right,” said Clint, giving him two fingers. “Gilly, get up front.” Usually Clint and Graham occupied the front seats, so Gilly scrambled up like he’d been offered candy. Clint stuffed a bag between his back and the window and leaned back, pulling Noel against his chest. Noel settled down on him, letting his head drop against Clint’s collarbone. For a long time they said nothing, watching the heavy white cliffs drop away as Graham found their way onto the M20. The heavy thunk-thunk of the wipers seemed to echo Clint’s heart in his chest. 

The last few weeks swirled behind his eyes, a spatter-paint scene of lights and music, strange languages and strange faces. His eyelids felt like sandpaper and he was still a little drunk from the night before, fast moving to hungover. He kissed Noel’s temple and couldn’t find anything to say. Dortmund. Rotterdam. Frankfurt. They flashed behind his eyes like neon signs.

“How was it while I was gone?” he asked at last.

“Loads of fun. Spent the whole time shooting up under the flyover,” Noel told him. “Acid house parties every night. I don’t remember a fuckin’ thing.”

“Noel.”

“Well, maybe not every night, but your granny plays a mean game of Yahtzee and that’s God’s own truth.”

“Did you go see my granny while I was gone?” Clint asked in surprise.

“She promised sausages,” Noel explained. “Turns out she can drink me under the table, too. Things got pretty wild with Nana and me.”

“Thank you,” Clint said. Noel hugged him without speaking.

“What was it like?” he asked after a time.

“Mad,” Clint said. Noel was still, waiting for him to say more. “I mean, amazing. Exhausting. And--people loved it. Noel, they loved us.” 

“I’m so fucking jealous,” Noel said quietly.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Clint stroked his hair and kissed him. Even in his cloudy state Clint could feel him vibrating with envy, desires, with the thirst for everything that seemed to be at the bottom of Noel’s personality. Noel let Clint kiss him, lightly at first, then led him on with slow flicks of the tongue and a hand on his knee until Clint shrugged down in the bench seat to draw him closer. Noel brought one knee up over Clint’s hip and pressed forward.

“Did you just take a five hour train ride at arse o’clock in the morning to torture me?” Clint asked him. 

“No,” Noel said, and sucked on Clint’s lip until Clint could hear his own ragged breathing over the sounds of the road. There was the thunk of the wipers, the quiet sounds of Gilly getting into the first case of whiskey and flipping through the tapes he’d bought in Germany. Noel hitched closer, making their feet thrash in the air. From the tail of his eye Clint could see Graham or Gilly steal interested looks in the rearview mirror. He gently eased Noel away.

“Not here, y’ little sket,” he said.

“Why not?”

“When we get home.” 

“That’s ages, though,” Noel complained.

“Here.” Clint sat up just enough to catch his mouth and gave him the longest, filthiest kiss he could manage, long enough to count the slow beats of the heart between them. “There. Now be still.” Noel allowed himself to be tucked between Clint and the seat, and together they dozed until Birmingham.

When Clint woke he found Graham and Gilly making their way through the last of the bottle and the van weaving slightly on the road. 

“Fuck. Noel, I need to get up,” he said, jostling him. “Graham. Graham! My turn, mate. Pull over.”

It was growing dark and raining steadily when they stopped to make the switch. Noel seemed to observe the rest of the band for the first time as he settled into the passenger seat. “Fuck me,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “It looks like you’ve been to the wars.” 

Clint looked. Graham and Gilly continued to pass the bottle between them without talking. Graham hadn’t washed or shaved for days, and Gilly’s young face was marked with dark circles. In the back Martyn stared out into the gloom. Steve’s eyes remained closed as they had done all day; a good way to cover the fact that no one was speaking to him, Clint reckoned. “Yeah,” he admitted. “It feels a bit like that.”

“Was it...was it good?” Noel asked. Clint’s heart twisted at the sight of his puzzled face. 

“It was amazing,” he said. “Just...road warriors, you know.” He cut off and stared out past the glittering windscreen. They spent the rest of the drive listening to tapes Clint had picked up everywhere they went. Noel laughed out loud at the French rap he’d bought at a shop in Rouen, but listened carefully to the Swiss DJ they met in Bonn. 

“This girl is fucking good,” Noel said.

“I know! Everyone we met was so fun. It seemed like they were so smart, too. They all spoke two or three languages at least. It felt like they all must think the English are idiots, but just keep it to themselves, you know?”

“Nope. Don’t know, don’t care. Fuck’em,” Noel said.

At last there was the glow of Manchester off to the west. Clint pulled into the Guide Bridge Mill and began opening up all the doors, feeling like they’d left a million years before. Steve took just a single load of gear into the studio and went straight to his car. Noel watched him go curiously. Graham stared after the disappearing headlights with a hard expression, and opened his mouth to speak.

“Let him go,” Clint said. “We’ll deal with it when we’ve all had some sleep.”

Clint drove Gilly home because he lived nearest to Gilly’s mam in Chadderton. Noel and Gilly talked about European rap all the way, but Clint hardly heard them. The rain made tungsten splatters on the windscreen, reminding Clint of the barrage of stage lights, or certain late drives through Hamburg or Bourges. It made him feel loose and untethered, as if he might veer off one of the long looping flyovers and never come down. It was only eight miles but it felt like an age. He drove with his hand on Noel’s thigh and Noel’s hand tucked in his own, fingertips resting on the big reassuring pulse in his knee. The lights gleamed on Noel’s skin, flickering gold and cream under the passing lights. His eyes lit as he turned to talk to Gilly in the backseat. Clint adjusted the mirror to see him as he drove, and the big pulse thumped under his fingers. By the time they turned on to Gilly’s street all Clint could think about was getting him alone.

“Do you want to eat?” Noel asked, as they watched Gilly go up the walk.

“I want to go home,” Clint said.

Noel looked at him. “Let’s get on, then,” he said softly.

They entered the stairwell silently, with a duffle bag slung over Clint’s shoulder and Noel’s fingers still tight in his hand. The door closed behind them, shutting out the rain and the streets and the huge endless cities. He kissed him there, with the bag still over his shoulder. Somewhere above was the tick of rain on the metal roof. Heavy shadows fell on everything from the light at the top of the stairs. A soft sound rose from Noel as their bodies hit the wall. Noel’s mouth was hungry and smoky and sweet, and it seemed to contain his whole soul. Clint felt like he was kissing a stranger and--and a bride. He wished he could live every moment of his life exactly like this. At last his brain began to click around the light streaming down the stairs. Noel must have left the light on for them.

“You were here while I was gone?” 

“The bed was fucking manky after the night before you went, wasn’t it,” Noel said a satisfied look. “Wasn’t gonna sleep on that again.”

“I love you so fucking much,” Clint said. He began to back him up the stairs, hoisting him against the wall with one leg shoved between his thighs. Noel laughed and bit him, and wrestled back as if the tight feel of his arms was delicious. Something might have bruised on the way but Clint couldn’t tell that either of them cared. They stumbled through the door in a tangle of teeth and animal noise.

The flat was clean, Clint realized when he opened his eyes to breathe. A carton of eggs and some fresh bread sat on the worktop. The lamp glowed back in the sleeping area. A yellow-fronted album sleeve stood at the top of their queue; a Bee Gees compilation that they’d bought together at Affleck’s the day before he left. It was already flipped to side B and the needle stood ready on the platter, because they’d never gotten to hear the second half. Clint’s heart twisted at all the little signs of love, scattered like white stones in the forest. He felt sick. Slowly he eased his grip on Noel’s arse and returned him to the floor.

“Let’s sit down a minute,” he said.

“Don’t want to sit down,” Noel said, sliding a hand under Clint’s shirt.

“Please, I have--I want to talk.” Clint pulled him until they sat on the loveseat with their hands clasped on Clint’s shins. The silence spun out like a tender thread. 

Sometimes when the sound setup wasn’t quite right you could hear the electrical sound of Clint’s organ. It wasn’t any tone of any key but the pure hum of the transistor signal itself. It clogged his brain and made it impossible to think of anything else. It felt like that now.

“I want to tell you something,” he began. Noel just looked at him with the offended look that meant that they shouldn’t be wasting their time not kissing. He was so ready, so unafraid. Clint couldn’t look directly at him. “Noel, I--” he took a deep breath to calm the pounding in his stomach and tried again. “There were groupies on the tour. We--I had groupies.” 

There was a long silence. Noel’s head tipped to the side, as if searching for a sound he couldn’t quite catch. His lips began to form a word, then stopped, twice. 

“You’re...you’re telling me you fucked fans, in Germany or wherever,” he said.

“Yeah.” Clint ran a thumb over Noels knuckle where the skin lay so close to the bone.

“Boys or girls?”

“Girls.” 

Long moments of silence passed. 

“What was that like, then?” Noel asked. He blinked down at his hands like a child stood on a high wall.

Clint tried to find words that could speak past his shame. He’d known it was wrong, known he felt horrible the whole time. But it seemed so far away and unreal, like tour was the real world and home was the dream. But now that he was home, looking him in the face, he understood that everything was different.

“It’s like….You do your gig like you always do,” Clint said. “But there’s way more people around, and they like the songs way more than it seems like they ought to. It’s amazing, but sort of unreal. ‘Cos it’s what you’ve been waiting for all your life, right? All of a sudden now it’s coming true?

“There’s just tons of people, before and after. So many of them are girls, and they look at you, you know--quite differently. They go everywhere you go. They’re in the venue when you get there, they’re in your dressing room. You go to the pub after, and there they are. Maybe some of them your mate brought, but most of them you don’t even know how they got there. And the same one or two keep ending up near you, you know? Looking at you like you’re a genius.” 

Clint watched Noel as he spoke, following the slow movement of his lashes. He looked like he was watching the bottom fall out of the world. Clint pulled his knees to his chest and knotted his hands in front. He thought he was going to be sick.

“They’re just...there, the girls,” Clint said. He didn’t want to say it, but it would be so much worse if he knew all this and never told. If he had secrets and lies, and had to make others keep secrets and lie. If he was afraid of Noel finding the truth. 

“They're in the pub, and they’re still around when the pubs close and you all decide to go back to your rooms for more. You can see it coming. And your mates, they’re electric, even though they have wives and girlfriends at home too, right? Your adrenaline is sky high. You can’t believe it’s happening. You’re in a real band and you’ve crushed it. People are lining up to talk to you, hanging around hoping to get a seat next to you. There’s people translating, there’s no end to the excitement.” 

Clint lifted his shoulders, helplessly. “You’re going around the clock. It’s totally fucking unreal. All your dreams are coming true. And eventually there’s a woman who sits down on your bed like she belongs there. And you look at your mate across the room, and there’s a woman on his bed too.”

Noel rubbed his eyes. He looked infinitely tired, as if Clint had put a heavy weight on him. He couldn’t seem to stop rubbing his face, and shook his head to clear it away.

“Clint….I can’t be a girl for you,” he said.

“I don’t want a girl. I want you.”

Noel made a bitter sound. 

“Noel. Please.” 

“I should have thought,” he said, rubbing his face again. “I didn’t think. Why didn’t I?” He looked up at Clint in confusion. “Tours. Blokes. Fucking weeks of gigs and drugs. Of _course._ What did I think was going to happen? And--and here’s me, mooning around like a--” he broke off. “All this time I never wondered once, do y’ know what I mean?”

“Noel, don’t.”

“How could I not know?” His voice broke.

“Noel.” Clint pulled Noel toward him until he was in Clint’s lap. “Christ. Noel, I’m so sorry. So ashamed. I swear I’ll never--”

“Don’t,” Noel said quietly. “Don’t promise that.” He shook his head. Clint’s hands found their way around him, and slowly Noel’s head dropped onto his shoulder.

They cried together until they were sick. Clint wrapped a hand in Noel’s hair as if he could keep him close, and they fell into an exhausted sleep on the loveseat. Some time in the night they woke up still sitting, and unsteadily made their way to bed. Clint dragged back the covers and shed his travel clothes before getting in their freshly made bed. How Noel must have missed him to do all this.

They made love in the dark slowly, their two cocks slick in a pool of regret and tears. Clint gasped out half-formed thoughts and wordless endearments. Noel said nothing. He shuddered whenever Clint touched him. When he came with his face buried against Clint’s shoulder, he left wetness smeared on his skin. Clint wiped Noel’s eyes with his palm and kissed every inch of his face.

Clint half woke to the sound of Noel moving around while it was still dark. “Work,” Noel whispered, and rubbed Clint’s knee through the blanket. Clint slipped back into sleep without thinking, dragged by weeks worth of comedown. 

It wasn’t until he woke up hours later that he realized every single thing of Noel’s was gone from the flat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clint's overwhelming shame about his infidelity is canon. It's the subject of his song This is How It Feels, which he discusses in John Robb's oral history _The North Will Rise Again._ See my #Clint Boon quotes tag on tumblr.


	11. Chapter 11

Clint called every day for weeks. Either Noel was never home or his family was lying for him. Clint kept an eye out everywhere he went, thinking surely they would run into each other, but they never did. He wondered if he ought to go to Noel’s house and demand to speak to him, but knowing that Noel was in the closet to his family kept him from it. He kept on calling.

A few times he got Liam on the phone. “Hello, this is Clint calling for Noel. Is he in?” Clint said politely the first time, like his mam had taught him to do with strangers.

“Fuck right off, y’ fucking poof,” Liam said promptly. “He’s not for the likes of you. Leave him alone or I’ll break your legs.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Go bugger a sheep, fucking pervert.”

There was a scuffle on the other end of the line. Suddenly Clint understood that Noel was there, watching Liam take his calls.

“Noel. Noel!” he said, hoping he would hear. There were muffled words and a clatter, and Liam spitting out _He’s a cunt, right? And a faggot and a liar--_ and the line went dead. Jesus. Clint had been about to go by Noel’s house to try and make him talk, but surely he couldn’t. Liam would give their mam Noel’s secret and probably scare her to death as well. He dialed again but got no more answers that day. After that Liam just slammed down the phone as soon as he heard Clint’s voice.

There was an older brother who said, “Sorry, he’s not in, mate,” when Clint called in the afternoon, or at tea time, or in the evening. He sounded so normal. And Noel’s mother was sweet and bewildered, unable to reckon why he was calling her boy off the hook. “I’m that sorry love, he’s not in,” she’d say every time, and never offered to take a message. He thought that she must work a lot, because she rarely answered. Usually it was the normal brother. He left messages whenever he got the machine, making them casual and clipped because he knew that Noel would never forgive him if he let his mother figure out their relationship. “Noel, it’s Clint. Give us a ring,” he’d say, as if it was just that easy.

Meanwhile Clint was going mad managing the Inspirals. Suddenly there was money in record sales every week, and calls for interviews, and reviewers at shows, and fan mail. Fan mail! The band looked in awe at the pile of letters and notecards Clint brought from his letterbox. He made them write Manchester postcard replies to every one of them, but soon began thinking that they ought to make postcards of their own, and maybe some stickers to go with the cow shirts.

He and Graham were scrambling to get the new batch of songs into shape, because the first sessions for their album with Red Rhino were just a few weeks away. Steve turned being a belligerent gobshite his fulltime job. He didn’t like the songs, didn’t like anything--didn’t like their record deal, for Christ’s sake. It was happening too fast, he said, like they hadn’t been working for it for five years. Clint did his best to stay quiet and play the fucking tunes, knowing his misery was no one’s fault but his own.

He missed Noel, was the thing. He couldn’t sleep. He forgot to eat. A couple of times he almost passed out on the printing room floor, and came awake to irritated shouts and the beeping of a forklift in reverse. He threw himself into the parties, the shows, the paperwork, the tunes, and blew crank off his kitchen table alone every night to get it all done. Nobody asked him about Noel’s sudden absence. 

One night he was trying to get through invoicing before going back to the studio to lay down base tracks with Graham when the phone rang. Clint didn’t move, figuring to let the machine get it. Three rings and his own weedy voice saying “You’ve reached Clint and the Inspiral Carpets. Leave a message,” and then two beats of silence.

“Hey Clint, it’s me. Just calling to, em…”

Clint dove for the phone. “Noel?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey. Fuck. Em... I’m glad you called.”

“Yeah,” Noel said, and sighed a long contented sigh. 

“Noel? Are you okay?” 

“Yeah man, I’m great. Just, you know, wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”

Christ, he was fucking zonked. Clint couldn’t identify what he’d taken by the sound of his voice. Something airy and dreamy. It wasn’t E though, and besides Noel would never be near a phone with nothing to do while taking that.... 

“Wait. You did what?” 

Noe giggled--an absolute fucking giggle. “Yeah. ‘Cos it’s so nice, your voice” he said, and sighed, like he couldn’t feel a thing. Somewhere in the background were collected voices and the sound of an intercom.

“Noel, are you in hospital right now?” Clint asked. There was a long silence.

“Maybe.”

“At Longsight?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck. What room?”

“I dunno.” Noel said. He chuckled, and repeated himself in a little singsong. “I dunno, I dunnoooo…”

“Noel, listen to me. I’m not your family. They won’t let me in if you haven’t already told me where you are.”

Noel seemed to rustle around. “Bettina, you’re still there, right? Listen, Bettina, when you see a sexy gowk with a bad haircut come in downstairs, you send him to me, alright? That one’s for me.” Then he rung off the line.

Fucking bloody Christ. Clint grabbed his wallet and keys and went. Bettina must have got the message down, because the granny at the front desk just handed him a slip of paper with a room number when he asked for Noel Gallagher. He found him at the end of a long hallway in the urgent care wing of Longsight Medical Centre, one leg done up in bandages as big as himself. 

“Christ, Noel.” Clint sat on the bed and took his hand. “What happened?”

Noel withdrew his hand and rolled his head inelegantly toward the corner. A little woman with dark circles under her eyes was sat there; his mother, surely. Clint removed himself from Noel’s bed instantaneously. This was the woman whose son he made cry with pleasure, he thought. She didn’t have a clue, he could tell. Unable to think of a single thing to say, he returned his gaze to Noel and repeated, “What happened?”

“Dropped a pipe on it at work,” Noel said, shrugging. His entire little body seemed to shrug at once, like he was made of string.

“A pipe,” Clint said, eyeing the bandage. “How big was this pipe, d’you think?”

“As big as you, maybe? But more this way, like.” Noel waved vaguely, indicating great length.

“Fuck. What the hell is going on under there?”

“I don’t know,” Noel said, his voice thick with dread. “Clint. They won’t let me go home.”

His mother spoke from the corner. “He’s a mess and no mistake. They x-rayed it but won’t set the bones yet. They want the swelling down for another look tomorrow, for the doctor thinks it’ll want surgery to go back together right. The thing’s well crushed.”

“Mam, I want to go home,” Noel said urgently.

“Aye. But ye can’t, love,” she told him. Clint turned to look at her more closely. She had Noel’s bright eyes in a face made sharp through time, or maybe trouble. A shy woman, he thought, with Noel’s air of vigilance.

“You must have been well scared when this one called you,” he observed.

“Aye, I would have done, if he had called. It were his boss, though, that called from the office before they brought ‘im in. I don’t think he would have called at all, would you, Noely?”

“I’d have called for a ride home,” Noel said. He opened his mouth to say more but then seemed to forget, and his eyes wandered slowly out of focus.

“How much pain killers have they got you on?” Clint asked him. 

“Not yet enough,” said Noel’s mother wryly. With a shock Clint realized she was not so old as he had supposed; she must have been a very young mother when Noel was born.

“Would--would you like to go home for anything?” he asked. “Can I stay while you do any little errands or gather what you need? I’m sure you must have run out of the house in a rush.”

“I would that,” she agreed, rubbing her face in a gesture he’d seen Noel make a hundred times. “Me sister Bridget is coming round to give me a lift; Liam was supposed to be here already to stay with him while I go.” 

Clint watched Noel’s face, which seemed to come somewhat alert as she spoke. Yes, he understood what Clint was at despite his fog; if his mam went off they could have a few minutes alone. 

“‘S fine, mam. I’m _finnnne._ Fuck off with Auntie Bridget when she gets here, yeah? Clint’ll stay till you get back. He promises. He’ll be so good.” God bless him, he was doing his best to look calm and reassuring but he could hardly hold his head up; it kept rolling first to the left and then the right like a rag doll. Clint did what he could to persuade her and at last she went.

Clint returned to the chair beside the bed when she had gone and tried to think what to say. “I’m glad you called,” he began.

“Me too,” Noel said. “Now get up here, yeah?”

“Pardon?”

“I’ve got a stonker under me gown. Help a man out.”

“What? No!” Clint said. “You’re--” Out of it, he almost said, but decided Noel might not take it kindly and finished, “Not feeling well.”

“No fucking kidding. And that’s down to you, right? So get over here.”

“How...never mind. Okay, the foot’s my fault.”

“Yeah,” Noel said. His face expressed deep resentment for an instant, then passed into eagerness. “That’s why you’ve got to drop your skittle for me.”

“Christ,” Clint said, and looked at the door. “Jesus, Noel. I’m not--”

“Not really a virgin, I know.” Noel waved his hand. “But you are for me. Virgin-to-Noel, and that’s what counts, innit.”

“Listen, would you lower your voice? I’m not--not opposed--”

“Great, jump up. Did you bring lube?”

“No! Jesus,” Clint said. 

“You said you would do it though. You just said it, just this minute. Are you lying to me, you cheating cunt? Bettina--”

Clint caught his hand and pressed it hard. “Sh. Shh. I promise I will. Okay? I swear it.” Noel seemed to grow calmer. Clint rubbed a thumb over the back of his hand and murmured things that he hoped were soothing. At last Noel’s eyelids began to sag again.

“Fucking cunt,” he mumbled.

“I know,” Clint said quietly. “I know, love. I’m so sorry. And I swear I’ll do whatever you want when we’re out of here.”

“I might not come out, though,” Noel said, and tipped his head up sideways until Clint could look him in the eye. “It’s bad, mate. They won’t let me look at it. Mam was almost sick when she saw. I might...it might not be the same after. I might not walk right or--or--”

“You will,” Clint said. “You will, it will be as good as new.” He moved to the bed and took both Noel’s hands. “Don’t say that. It’s going to be okay.”

“That was why I had to call, you know?” Noel said. “I needed to see you now, before I know what’s going to happen. Because if it’s bad…there might not be another chance.”

Clint wiped his face. “There’s a million chances,” he said. “Always. Noel, I--”

There was a rustle at the door. Clint leaped off the bed and began digging around in Noel’s clobber on a chair looking for--he couldn’t think what, anything to get him away from Noel’s blissed out, star-drunk eyes, which he had been about to kiss in a fucking hospital full of people.

The woman who came through the door was in her middle forties, built like a Sunday roast, with a high coif of dyed-yellow hair. “Bettina,” Noel informed Clint, raising hiseyebrows. Clint coughed.

“Hey there,” he said. “I guess you’ve got our Noel here for a bit, yeah?”

Bettina looked at Noel with deep skepticism. “So it seems,” she said.

“I’m Clint, a friend from work--”

“Cheating cunt,” Noel explained. Clint went on hastily.

“How is he? What’s going on with the foot? His mam said it’s pretty beat up.”

“Mmph.” Bettina said nothing and went about getting Noel’s vitals. Noel opened his mouth, his eyes, lifted his elbow for the blood pressure cuff. Clint leaned against the windowsill and watched. In fascination he realized that Noel’s other hand, the right one, was groping about on the blanket as if it was looking for something. At last Noel looked at him accusingly. 

“Do y’mind?” he demanded, holding his fingers out.

Bettina’s hand paused on the cuff, and her nostrils flared. Shit, Clint thought. He shouldn’t be here. This woman was a homophobe and Noel was too high on painkillers to be careful. Clint made a quick inventory of the room. No private bath. There was a bedpan, but Noel couldn’t manage that himself. he was at the end of the hall, a dozen rooms away from the nurse’s station. If she felt like it she could just forget about him entirely. Noel couldn’t even get a drink of water on his own. Clint needed this woman on Noel’s side.

“What, d’y need your hand done too?” he asked in the straightest sounding voice he could muster, making a hammer with his fist. “Let’s wait until you’re out of surgery for the foot, can we?” He pretended to pound Noel’s hand with his hammer. Noel’s brows drew together in confusion. His fingers softened and wavered like rock weed, and drooped back to the bed. Clint plowed ahead, appealing to Bettina’s sense of importance.

“Bettina, you look like you really know what’s going on here. I don’t have a clue. How is he really? What’s the state of that foot? He’s gonna be okay, yeah?”

Bettina made some notes on Noel’s chart, looked it over for a long moment, then turned to Clint. “There are twenty-six bones in the foot. He’s broke at least a dozen of them. This is a Type II crush , meaning there’s laceration as well as fractures and soft tissue trauma. We don’t know about the connective tissues yet. Most likely he’ll have surgery tomorrow afternoon to repair any ligaments, and probably pins for some of the bones. We won’t know until after if he’ll walk on his own again. He’s a lucky boy, you know. If that pipe had come down going sideways instead of straight for the floor it could have sheared the foot right off.”

“Christ,” Clint said, suddenly nauseated. “Fucking hell. Is there anything we can do?”

“He needs to be kept calm.” Bettina stared at him over her clipboard. “And perfectly still,” she added. “No movement, no _touch,_ no conversation if possible. The best thing for him is a long kip.”

“Right. Of course, yeah,” Clint said. He looked around. The fluorescent bulb above Noel’s head had a bad connection; it buzzed and flickered about every two and a half seconds. In the hall a voice came over the intercom, stopped, and started again. The bloke across the hall had about ten visitors at once by the sound. It seemed like the last place anyone could sleep. He realized that Noel had begun to make a long, meandering sound.

“You alright, mate?” he asked.

“It hurts,” Noel said simply. 

Bettina looked at her watch. “Aye, right on time for his ten o’clock meds.” She glared at Clint as if it was all his fault, and went out with her back as stiff as a poker. But as soon as she turned out of sight there was a sound of collision and Liam came tumbling through the door. 

“Who fucking let you in?” he demanded when he saw Clint.

“He called me,” said Clint. “He asked for me.”

“He’s off his head. He don’t know what he’s doing.”

“I think he does, mate.”

“He don’t know what’s good for him, then.”

“And you do.”

“I fucking well do, yeah.” 

He had balls like a Bengal tiger, Clint had to admit. What was he, maybe sixteen? Slight and only a little taller than Noel. Clint had a dozen years and three stone on him, but the kid didn’t even blink as he advanced. Clint believed he would do it, too; there was a rawness in Liam’s face that suggested he wouldn’t hesitate to take Clint out right here if he could. Clint moved off Noel’s bed and stepped back, hoping to talk Liam’s temper down.

“Listen, he’s okay. It’s not the time, right? Let’s not do this. I love him, you love him, we need to get him through this right now.”

“Like fuck you do.”

“I do. Yeah.” Clint glanced at Noel. He seemed to be trying his best to listen, but kept nodding and tapping his hand like he was watching a music video. “Listen, I’m worried about this woman, the nurse. You’ve to keep an eye on her, right?”

“Do I fuck.”

“No, really. Liam. She doesn't like people like us. Like me and Noel.” 

“Well we should be best friends, her and me, ‘cos I fucking hate you.”

“Damn it, Liam, pull your head out of your arse. Look around. Where do you think you are? She could tell your ma. She could fuck with his drugs. She could not give him things he needs.”

“That’s not gonna happen, though, ‘cos I’ll fuckin’ smash her eyes out. I’ll--” 

Clint just let him run. He was fucking hopeless, this kid. Half mad and useless, Clint thought. He didn’t have two thoughts in his head and--

“Liam.," Noel said quietly. All of Liam’s anger vanished in an instant. Suddenly he was meek as a mouse by Noel’s side, pulling something out of the knapsack and murmuring things Clint couldn’t understand as he put it in Noel’s hand. It was a juice box like a kid takes on a day trip at school. Red-flavoured fruit punch. Noel looked at it and slowly put a hand to his face. He was still for a long time before they realized he was crying.

“But..but he likes it,” Liam said. “He does! Mam used to let us have it only when we were sick, you know? What’s he crying for? Noel, don’t…”

“I think he’s just tired, mate. It’s okay, you done well. Didn’t he, Noel?” 

“I can’t get this fucking thing open,” Noel said. “I need help. God damn it. And I’m hungry. I need more drugs. I need something to eat. Do you think the hospital will make you toast? I need--” suddenly his gaze sharpened. “Clint, I need you to--”

“Yeah I know,” Clint interrupted hastily. “I will, okay?”

“Promise.” 

“I promise.”

“Come here, though.”

“What?” 

Noel motioned until Clint stood beside him, then made him lean over the bed with his hands braced on either side. Clint obeyed warily, feeling pretty sure Liam was going to smash his head with a chair while his back was turned. Then Noel reached up and whispered breathily in his ear.

“You’re a cunt, and a twat, and I’m never gonna forgive you, yeah? I won’t. I fucking swear it. You’re a cheating bastard, and I love you so fucking much. I want you to come--come here tomorrow. Afterward. After whatever. You have to come and--”

There was a disapproving cough behind him. Fucking Bettina. Clint leaped about a mile at the sound. 

“Yeah, I will. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? I mean, you’re ready to sleep after your meds, right? You must be…” 

Fucking Bettina. And fucking Liam! They stared at him like he didn’t belong in the universe. Fuck them. He had as much right as any of them, or more. But he could see that his presence was winding Noel up, and that being there would only turn Bettina against him more. Clint’s eyes stung with rage. All this fucking time, and Noel wanted him, and he couldn’t fucking stay because being here made it worse for him.

Liam was sitting in Clint's spot on the bed now, fumbling with the little plastic straw to make Noel take his pills. Noel watched him with the spaced-out look of wonder that he would have been using on Clint, if they weren’t throwing him out. 

Clint was suddenly choked with jealousy of this violent, half-witted kid. Liam could stay, because they were brothers. He could be there as much as he wanted. Clint had to go away because he was only Noel's faggot lover but Liam, he could stay all night if he felt like it. They’d probably even let him sleep in the bed. Just because they were brothers. No one would ever even think.


	12. Chapter 12

The Inspirals were in their last session to close out recording. They’d been at Out of the Blue studios for weeks, driving through the deserted streets of Ancoats every night to lay down the tracks that would become their first full album. They'd planned an EP to go out fast for promotion, and the album to be complete by January. The EP tracks were totally done, and the full album was nearly there. Everything sounded great, except Stephen. His vocal tracks sounded like shite. 

They’d done a million takes of every song. It shouldn’t have taken that long. Clint had shared his and Graham's vision for the songs with Stephen a hundred times over. Graham had done it himself when Clint just couldn’t anymore. Clint wanted to believe that Stephen honestly couldn’t hear what was wrong, but he knew it wasn’t true. He didn’t want to, was the thing. At last they walked in from Stephen’s last take, sat down on the battered sofas in the control room, and listened back.

Nick, the engineer, played back the album without speaking. He and Clint had talked already. They’d hired Nick only to record but he’d ended up co-producing with Clint, and Clint was grateful for his help. Nick had given him a frank assessment of the first four tracks after the band had gone home the night before: knock this thing on head and call it done. It wasn’t going to get any better for doing it again. And he was right. They'd done the final mix for the EP last night and Clint had posted the masters to York that morning. He still hoped that something could be done with the rest of the album tracks, though. That something could be done with Stephen to make it feel fully, finally right. 

“It’s like...it’s like two different bands playing at the same time,” Craig said quietly when it was done. Martyn nodded, but said nothing. Clint waited. Graham was Stephen’s oldest friend. They’d been in school together, started the band together. So it was right that Graham was the one to speak.

“Stephen, I feel like you’re singing a different song to the rest of us. What’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m just singing the song the way it’s meant to be done,” Stephen said resentfully.

“It’s my song, though, innit,” Graham said. “I’m the one to say how it’s meant to be done.”

“Well, maybe I’m not the one to sing it, then.”

“What do you want us to do, mate? You’re the singer. These are the songs. But you’ve got to sing with us, not against us.”

“Yeah. Well. I’m not sure how to do that when this cunt keeps ruining things with his twirly sixties pop shite.” Stephen shot an aggressive look at Clint.

“Half the songs on the album are Clint’s,” Graham objected. 

“Exactly. He keeps writing pop shite, and turning everything else into pop shite so that all the songs on the albums, even mine--”

“You don’t have any songs on the album,” Clint said involuntarily. Everyone turned to him at once. 

Clint’s mouth fell open. He was stunned at his own clumsiness. He hadn’t been meant to say anything at all, but now he had and the truth was out. Stephen had contributed just one song to the sessions. It wasn’t any good. Clint and Graham had already decided it couldn’t go on.

“You don’t have any songs on the album,” Graham repeated gently. 

Stephen stared down at the floor, and for the first time Clint could see there was hurt behind his anger. Then he pulled out a pack of fags from his jacket. He tapped them against his palm, and his face grew hard. 

“Right. I’m out, then,” he said, and stood. No one looked up as he left. The weighted studio door closed silently behind him, leaving a whoosh of silence in his wake.

“I’ll give you a minute,” Nick said, and went out.

Clint felt his pulse pounding hard, his stomach tight with apprehension. He’d known this was coming for months, but it still felt like he’d killed somebody. Martyn and Gilly looked at their shoes, and no one said a thing.

Gilly was on the same page with them, Clint knew. His musical judgement was strong enough that he couldn’t mistake what was going on. But he was so terribly young. Stephen used to pick him up from school for rehearsals when he was just a kid; Gilly’s mother had to write him a note, for Christ’s sake. Of course he would be shaken.

And Martyn’s own songs were the angry, unrequited love-and-rage type. Clint had wondered more than once if he wouldn’t be happier in a raw garage band like Stephen wanted, and if they hadn’t ought to let him go. But his bass was too good to let go. He shared Craig’s ear for funk and rap, and they were becoming a tight, dynamic rhythm section with a distinctive sound. Most importantly though, Martyn was ambitious. Inspiral Carpets were a band on the rise. Anyone could see it, and Clint was pretty sure Martyn wasn’t a man to let an opportunity pass him by. He could go easy on the drugs and the partying, and he wasn’t afraid of hard work. But if he believed it might not pay off, if he saw the future falter…

Clint looked mutely at Graham. Graham turned his hands up; he had nothing. Clint didn’t doubt his support. He knew well enough that they were on the same team, Graham just didn’t have the words for it. It was down to him now. Clint took a deep breath.

“Listen to me well, now,” he said. “If what we wanted was to play down at the Farmer’s Arms every weekend, we wouldn’t need a band as talented as this. But here we are. I want more, and I reckon you do too. And we can do it.” He leaned forward and looked each one of them in the eye. “I believe in this band. And if Stephen doesn’t, then by Christ we’re better without him.” 

He could feel, he could bloody well _see_ the room steady at his words. Gilly looked at him and smiled, already tapping out a beat on his knee. Martyn shrugged and opened another beer. 

“All right, then. Who do we get?”

“God knows,” Clint said. “Anybody know of a band having marital problems?”

Graham and Clint went to see punk bands, rhythm and blues bands, rockabilly greasers, ska outfits and pop groups over the next few weeks. They went to see anyone they could find. They ducked in late and stood in the back of one smoky venue after another, watching silently. They knew what they were looking for. A big voice, smooth but not too pretty. Someone who knew how to dress and had some personality. The songwriting wasn’t important, they had that already. They needed what was hardest to find, and what Stephen never was: someone who could get the audience on their side. 

“This one?” Graham asked doubtfully, looking at the toothy singer prowling the stage one night.

“Christ, I hope not,” Clint said, looking at the guy’s rockabilly boots and slicked back hair. The voice was good, but everything else was pretty questionable. His features were okay and the toothy impression could be handled, but his ears were a fucking problem. But they didn’t want a pretty singer, either, as he’d be bound to stick out too much from the rest of them. Better that they look like a proper band, even if a plain one. Maybe if they could make this guy grow out his hair and put on a proper pair of jeans it would be okay. More problematic was his uncontrolled physical energy, throwing himself around the stage like a chained beast. He was going to pull the cord on his own mic if he didn’t look out. The audience liked it though; the whole sea of heads was starting to rise and bop. Clint began to watch the singer more carefully.

“Noel wants to audition,” Graham said suddenly.

Clint turned to look at him. “He’s not even on his feet yet.”

“I know. But he’s thinking.”

Clint lit a cigarette and thought. He’d kept as close to Noel as he’d dared over the last few weeks. He’d been to see him every day in the hospital, but he hadn’t been invited to come around since he’d got home. Clint had a feeling Noel didn’t want him in the house, though they spoke on the phone every day. He wasn’t sure what to do. 

“He didn’t say anything to me about it,” he said at last.

“He wouldn’t, would he? He can’t come to the band through you, because he’d never know if he got it because he was good enough, or because of--”

Clint made a face. “Yeah. I get it. But he can’t sing, can he?”

“I don’t know if he can or not. He’s always writing, though. Must have a fucking lot of tunes by now.”

“I know. It’s so damned cute. But are they any good, though? I mean...Christ, what do we do?”

“I think we let him audition, just like anybody,” Graham said. “If he’s good enough we’ll take him, and if he’s not we won’t. I’ll handle it all. You can do the next prick.”

Clint nodded. Noel wasn’t just anybody, was the problem. Clint missed him with a burning ache in his belly despite the odd moment together here and there in the hospital, despite his voice on the phone every day. It wasn’t enough. Noel had shown no signs of remembering what he’d said in the hospital, and he’d been so out of it that Clint thought he couldn’t possibly. Clint felt like he was pacing around the tower of a damned princess, waiting for a sign that wasn’t going to come. But maybe there was a sign, though, because apparently Graham and Noel were talking when Clint didn’t know about it. Clint turned to his bandmate. 

Graham was already watching him, waiting. He’d already clicked through all the thoughts in Clint’s head. “He needs you, mate” he said simply.

“Does he want me, though,” Clint said.

Graham shrugged wistfully, and it occurred to Clint that whatever it was that Graham got as he ran from one bed to the next, he didn’t have anything like what Clint had with Noel. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not the one to ask.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Clint said. “Can you repeat that for me, Gerri, I didn’t catch it.” He was at his kitchen table alone, leaning against the low-eaved wall with his trainers kicked across the floor. He’d planned a call with Gerri tonight to talk about the masters that he’d posted earlier in the week. He had to ask her to give back their masters and admit that he'd lost their singer, and he'd been sick with anticipation for days. He was so keyed up he hardly heard her say it, the first time.

“Red Rhino Records filed for bankruptcy this week," Gerri repeated. "The shop, the label, the publishing and all. We’re going out. We cease operations next week, and we’ll be in voluntary liquidation by the end of the year.”

There was a long silence. 

“One more time, please?” Clint said.

“Red Rhino is out of cash and out of credit, Clint. We owe studios, we owe sub-labels, we owe manufacturers and bands. We’ve got product in a hundred shops and we can’t keep the doors open long enough to move it off the shelves.”

“For Christ’s sake, Gerri! You signed us six weeks ago.”

“Things change.”

“I’ll bet they do,” Clint said bitterly. “Where does that leave us? Fuck. You paid cash for our studio time, yeah?”

“Aye, we did,” Gerri said. Clint had insisted on it; he’d seen other bands lose their sessions when another group came in with cash. “We paid cash, and you delivered the album on Tuesday.”

“Damn it, Gerri, we delivered on _Tuesday_. You couldn’t have let us know?”

“Would it have changed anything for you?”

“No.”

“Well. You have a better situation than a lot of others. Your album is done, and because of the dissolution clause in your contract the masters are yours. We’ll ship them back to you tomorrow.” 

“Yeah. Thanks,” Clint said. The masters were theirs, but they didn’t have a singer. Clint hung up the phone and swore.

At Noel’s mother’s house Clint waited at the gate for him to come out. He hadn’t dared to properly invite himself over, but he’d asked if Noel could give him a few minutes if he dropped by. It was a Saturday in mid-December, and Clint assumed that Noel’s family were somewhere behind the blue eyelet curtains. Noel closed the door clumsily behind him and tripped twice over his crutches on his way down the stairs. It wrung Clint’s heart to see the contrast to his ordinary tidy way of moving.

“Sit ‘ere,” Noel ordered when he’d made his way down to the garden wall. He wriggled onto the damp bricks using the crutches as boost, ignoring Clint’s offered hand. His feet dangled adorably, one in the massive air cast that he had to use until his stitches were out, and the other in a blue-striped trainer.

“Did your mam used to get after you for climbing up here when you were small?” Clint asked.

“No. We didn’t come here until I was sixteen or so. By then I had better things to do than climb the garden wall. Eating magic mushrooms down to the park and that.”

“Didn’t you grow up in this house?” Clint asked. He didn’t know many people who moved growing up. Most of the poor Irish he knew stayed in the same flat from one generation to the next so long as the landlord didn’t throw them out.

“No,” Noel replied shortly. There was the hard veil over his family again. There was a period of silence, during which Clint watched Noel’s knuckles grow red with cold and a fine mist began to sift down from the sky. After a time Clint told him about the collapse of Red Rhino.

“Fuck me. You had it right, that day when we went to sign,” Noel said in wonder.

“I wish I hadn’t been. I wish I was wrong,” Clint said bleakly. “We were so damned close.”

“You are so close,” Noel said. “You are still. Why not just do it yourselves, though?”

“What?”

“Your own label. You know how to do everything, and you know most of the people already. What do you need Tony and Gerri for?”

“It’s a fuckin’ lot of work, Noel. It’s not easy.” 

“You’re good for it,” Noel said. “Fuckin’ workhorse, you are. And it wouldn’t be forever anyway. The band’s got so much momentum right now. You’re going to attract another deal before long, just as soon as you get another singer. So we open the label, run it for a year, look bloody fantastic and trigger a bidding war to get an even better deal than before. And maybe we don’t even want one, right? Maybe we get there and think, sod that, we’re fine on our own, right?”

“As soon as we get another singer. Yeah. Maybe.” Clint began totting up everything they’d need to have and do and then stopped, distracted by something he’d said. We.

The bridge of Noel’s nose showed a high red patch from cold. One hand absently rubbed the other. His head tilted as if he was listening to silent music, and his single trainer was growing damp with rain. Clint thought he would crack with longing just looking at him.

“Noel. Tell me what I should do.”

Noel didn’t pretend that he didn’t know what he meant. His head tilted further, still listening. “Well, what is it you want?” he asked.

“You. Everything. All,” Clint said. “I want to take you home with me right fucking now.”

Noel’s lip caught in his teeth. “I need time,” he said unsteadily. “I’m not ready.” There was a little pool of silence. “I meant what I said in the hospital though,” he added.

“I didn’t think you remembered that,” Clint admitted.

“Oh I do.”

“Okay. Yeah. I meant it too, anything you want. But...why now, do y’think?”

Noel looked at him for the first time, and his eyes were hot with resentment, possessive outrage, anger, and lust. “I’m gonna do for you what no girl can ever do, yeah? I’m gonna make you fucking remember me.”


	13. Chapter 13

Clint and Graham were waiting outside Guide Bridge Mill when Noel arrived for his audition.

Martyn and Gilly were in the rehearsal room doing what Clint vaguely thought of as rhythm section things: music so unmelodic that his brain went numb in just a few minutes of listening to it. But it was as necessary as anything he or Graham did, so he left them to it and went out to watch for Noel. 

It was five or six blocks from the nearest bus stop, a long walk on crutches after a maze of bus changes from Noel’s house. It had taken all Clint’s determination not to offer him a ride.  
Treat him just like anybody, he reminded himself, and halted his urge to start forward when Noel came into view down the street. Graham saw it and grinned. 

“Cig?” he offered, and together they watched Noel approach.

Clint let Graham greet Noel first, giving him only a quiet “Hey, mate,” and a handshake on their way in. He and Graham had agreed that they’d alternate running the auditions, and obviously this one was Graham’s. Clint followed them into the dim warehouse, through the arching angled shadows and the scent of ink and wooden crating to the little room he’d built in the back.

Graham was the most comfortable of any of them, making chatter with Noel on their way. He was such a cheeky bastard he could pull off anything, Clint thought gratefully. For himself, he was almost sick with nerves. He didn’t dare think of what would happen if Noel was good and they could take him, how it might be if Noel could be on the road with them in his own right, not as Clint’s sidecar. He didn’t dare think because he was pretty sure Noel would be bad, and all he could think of was the sheepish light of hope in his face going out.

Noel struggled with his crutches in the crowded rehearsal room. In the end he leaned them against the wall and leaned on the equipment to hobble to an amp where he could sit. Graham handed him a cold Stella and said, “So you know the songs, right? Where do you want to start?”

They all laughed at the ridiculousness and their own nerves. Noel had been to every British show for six months, been to almost every rehearsal until that European tour. Of course he knew the songs. He cleverly named one of Graham’s own tunes, and then Gilly was counting them in.

He wasn’t any good. It was clear from the first second and they all could tell. Noel was so nervous that the beer shook in his hand, and he had to shout to get past the tightness of his throat. He had plainly never sung in front of an audience before. He had a perfectly ordinary young man’s voice; his pitch was proper fine but there was no interesting texture and no craft at all. Nothing could be less like the Inspiral Carpets’ sound.

Clint felt like he was two men during the songs that followed. As the one he watched it all coolly, assessing Noel’s nerves and voice and the agonizing shyness of his seat on the amplifier, watching the rest of the band see how immediately unsuitable he was and politely conceal their dismay, and beginning to calculate how to let him down. The second man was racked with emotion: burning with embarrassment for Noel when he missed coming in, keyed up with anxiety for the next time his voice would crack with strain from shouting, stunned at the sheer balls of him. It was so tremendously brave. Clint couldn’t believe it. It would have been a hundred times easier for Noel with strangers he didn’t care about, with whom he had nothing to lose. But to come here in front of mates and lovers and give it his best shot and wait to be told no because surely, surely he knew he wasn’t good enough—Clint thought his heart would crack with love and pride.

It was so bad. Clint felt three songs would never fucking end. Noel was hoarse long before they finished and Clint found it harder and harder to watch him. He noticed the rest of the band averting their eyes as well. Toward the end of the last one Graham caught his eye, mouthed the words “Gimme Shelter” and changed key. God bless him, he was the best mate that ever was to give Noel something to end that they could all feel good about. Pretty soon they were all shouting on the _just a shot away_ and Gilly was cracking them all up with his voice. Like most drummers his pitch was atrocious, and he sang so earnestly and so badly that they were all in stitches. 

When it was over Noel pulled a cassette from his pocket and handed it to Graham. “That’s some songs I wrote,” he said awkwardly. “It’s just me and the walkman, but it’ll give you an idea what I’ve got.” 

“Thanks, mate,” Graham said, “We’ll give it a listen. We’ve got a few more people to audition so I’ll call you in a few weeks. Let me walk you out, yeah?” Clint wondred how Graham suddenly got so good at bullshitting. They went out talking, and Gilly and Martyn continued to play a tightly smothered version of Gimme Shelter. Clint played along mindlessly, hardly noticing when Graham came in again and picked up his guitar without speaking. At last the songtrickled out until they were all looking at him without a word. Clint rubbed his face.

“We can’t take him,” he said. “He’s just not very good. But even if he was he doesn’t sound like us. We’ll keep looking.” The whole room nodded and relaxed, and Clint took a full breath for the first time in hours. 

He knew it was the right thing for the band. He couldn’t bring himself to think of what it would mean for him and Noel. He just knew that he’d been walking a damned fine line. To lose a label was hard; to lose a singer just as the band began to crest was more than most would recover from. The only reason they were still together was because they trusted Clint with their goddamned souls, even Graham. Clint knew bloody well that Graham wasn’t capable of leading them through this on his own. And if they sensed for a second that Clint was putting his own interest above band they would scatter like the wind.

Thanks, mate,” Graham said quietly in the little hum of activity that followed. Clint just leaned forward to let Graham rumple his hair. Then with the Rolling Stones still on his mind he kicked into the cool Rhodes tones of “Miss You”, called Gilly to back him up, and watched Graham drop into his best Mick Jagger impression, prancing between the amps, pointing his finger over his guitar and swishing his hips about all the _Puerto Rican girls dyyyyn to meet’cha._

Clint flipped on the radio some time later. Something about John Peel’s voice doing the news break caught his attention, and he shouted at the others to quiet down.

“...catastrophic explosion in Scotland tonight. Pan American Flight 103 has crashed into the border town of Lockerbie with some two hundred and fifty people on board. Let’s go to the reporters on the scene and see if there’s anything left of Scotland.”

They stared at each other through the report that followed. Clint’s mind stuttered over the idea. A 747 going down in mid-flight. Hundreds of people wiped out in a blink. People on holiday, students going home for Christmas. A fucking crater twenty feet deep where it crashed. Bodies scattered over miles of pasture. A fireball dropping into the middle of town and whole houses blown out of existence as people sat down for their tea. 

“I’ve got to go,” said Martyn, and left. The others rapidly followed, hurrying home to touch whatever loved ones were there. Clint slowly turned out the lights and locked doors. He watched the streetlight glare on wet tarmac on his drive home, wondering what the hell he was doing with his life. He was almost thirty. He had fucked up the best thing he’d ever had, and here he was driving home alone on a night when people could plummet from the sky, clutching the hands of strangers. He stood outside smoking for a long time before going in, looking at the sky and thinking of gravity. Thinking of Noel safe asleep in his mother's house and wondering what he might say if they had just a few seconds before the plane hit bottom.

He went inside and pulled off his damp clothes in the dark, groping around for dry things. He was bloody freezing. He found a sweatshirt and socks to put on with his t shirt and pyjamas and crawled under the duvet, heartsick and numb in the brain. The bed heaved like a pit of snakes as he got in, scared him shitless. He leaped away swearing and crashed against a wall. A pile of books went over, then a spare guitar. Christ. He couldn't even hear the sounds from the bed at first for the pounding in his chest. At last it became clear: laughter. Noel in his goddamn bed, laughing his tits off.

“What the hell, Noel! It’s not fucking funny.”

“It is though!” Noel said through fits of giggles. “I wish—oh Jesus, I wish I could see your face!”

“You’re a cunt,” Clint said. “You’re a—wait. Did you come here just to scare the piss of me? Of all the goddamned nights. The world is ending out there and you’ve got a prank on? I--”

“I didn’t. I didn’t! That’s not what it was. Clint, I just—sit down, yeah?”

Clint grudgingly got into bed and wrapped the blankets around himself. Fuck Noel if he wasn’t covered. Served him right, sneaking around and scaring people. He rolled up tight as a cocoon and listened to Noel rustle around, trying to get a blanket end to cover with. At last Clint unrolled enough to let him under. Noel didn’t stop there, though, but wriggled and hitched until he was inside Clint’s arm and Clint could feel his breath fanning lightly on his neck. Pushy little bugger. 

Clint lay his back, looking up at the black ceiling and thinking about his fingertips where they rested on Noel’s shoulder. “Why did you come then?” he asked after a time.

“‘Cos I missed you, twat,” Noel said grumpily. “I heard the radio when I got on the bus, yeah? And I just...wanted you, I reckon.”

“Oh.” Clint’s fingers found their way into Noel’s hair. “Oh. Yeah. Same.”

After that it was remembering the geography of his face in the dark, placing slow kisses over his skin, getting breathless with the smell and taste of him and letting Noel pull each kiss impatiently from his mouth.

“I’ve got it,” Clint said when Noel began to push his hips forward. He moved to straddle him, carefully avoiding his cast and bringing them together gently through their clothes. He stroked one thumb across his temple and kissed him light as feathers.

“Fuck you,” Noel muttered. His fingers tightened at the back of Clint's neck and pulled, hard. Clint grunted. Noel pulled his hair until his head dragged sideways and bit Clint’s face. It sent prickles all over his body and a bolt of lightning to his cock. “Cunt,” Noel said. He pushed him over on his back, his head still dragged to the side. Noel’s teeth closed at the base of his neck, and Clint shuddered. He grasped Clint’s arm and shoved it across his body, turning him half over toward the bed. Suddenly Clint could feel the angry weight of him, shoving against Clint’s back, pushing him over and pulling impatiently at his clothes.

Noel’s hands pushed up inside Clint’s sweatshirt. Clint wriggled briefly and skinned it off over his head. Noel made a hungry noise and straight _bit_ Clint’s back, hard. Clint was face down on the bed now, writhing back to kiss him and groaning when Noel pushed his face into the sheet. Noel was like a wild thing on his back, hungry and careless in his urge to get rid of the rest of Clint’s clothes, biting and pinning him whenever Clint moved to help. There was rustling and the careless kick of Noel’s cast as he thrashed, and then the bare slide of his cock on Clint’s arse. He pushed roughly along his hole and slid past, burying himself beside Clint’s balls.

“Fucking Christ,” Clint gasped.

“Yeah?” Noel gritted in his ear, and tightened his grip. Clint nodded. He was so turned on, so breathless with arousal and disbelief he couldn’t speak. Noel thrust along his crack again and again until Clint could feel himself grow damp with sweat and precome, until his hole was soft with pressure and his voice filled his own ears with incoherent swearing. 

“Lube in the drawer,” he managed at last.

“No,” Noel said. He spat in his hand and rubbed them both with it, did it over and over until Clint nodded in agonized arousal. Noel was muttering to himself as he pushed into place, and Clint thought his head would explode with hotness.

When he first broke through they both froze, panting hard. It had been such a long time, and Clint couldn’t believe the intensity. It hurt, yeah, but the sheer bloody _sensation_ was blowing his mind.

“Alright?” Noel gasped.

“Alright, yeah. Fuck. Oh my god…. Christ, Noel, come _on_. Noel thrust a little, and made a sound so raw Clint’s stomach clenched. “Christ, yes,” Clint said. Noel began to thrust again, and lights ran up Clint’s skull and down his fingers. He was flat on his face with Noel’s fist in his hair. He was so turned on he couldn’t breathe and if it didn’t end soon he was going to lose his mind. He began to work a hand downward. Noel grabbed and pinned it above his head, growling.

“I need...I need a hand,” Clint said.

“Do you fuck,” Noel said. But he transferred Clint’s wrist to his other hand and worked his way between Clint’s belly and the bed. Clint groaned like a whore at his touch. “Fuckin’ hell,” Noel murmered, and roughly kissed his ear as he went on.

Clint began to shake. His whole body was going to explode. He tried to order Noel to go harder but he couldn’t get a damned word out. He twisted in Noel’s grip until he could get at his fingers and squeezed as hard as he could. At last Noel understood. Then his nails dug into his back like fire and all Clint could do was hold on while the sparks flew out of the top of his head and they set the sky on fire.

Afterward he couldn’t stop shivering. It was the most ridiculous thing; he wasn’t even cold. Still Noel covered him up like he was a girl, stroking his hair and saying his name in wonder as he eased down and pulled him close. Clint felt vaguely embarrassed even as he relaxed against Noel’s sweaty, reassuring chest. He felt like every muscle in his body had been unstrung, like he’d never be anxious or worried again.

“Guess we know what I like,” he said unsteadily after a time.

Noel laughed out loud. “Bloody hell, Clint. I guess so. Fuckin’ mega.” He touched the marks on Clint’s shoulder. Clint shuddered and worked deeper into the blankets.

“Ow,” he said. “Too much. Just be still.”

“You don’t really stop bossing people around, do you?” Noel asked, the adoration plain in his voice.

Clint nuzzled his head more comfortably on Noel’s shoulder. “I do too,” he said. “Now shut up, yeah? ‘M sleepy.”


End file.
